Utter Destruction and Lions Jumping Through a Ring of Fire

By: Inara | May 9th, 2007

lion Just all in a day’s work for the perennial French champions.

Lens were hoping to take advantage of Lyon’s recent malaise to get three very important points in their race for a Champions League spot. And for the first ten minutes of the match, it looked like their hopes were legitimate.

But after Karim Benzema’s shot hit the post, the sleeping lions came back to life and not only took over the match, but they scored three goals in 25 minutes!!!

You can find a longer match summary here, but in short: After 20 minutes, Florent Malouda sent over the perfect cross to Sidney Govou, who oh so sweetly slotted the ball into the net. It’s Govou’s first goal in the league, but I’m in a good mood, so I won’t comment on that. Fifteen minutes later, Benzema got the ball to Juninho, who took the opportunity to score his 12th goal of the season for Lyon. And before the audience could catch their breath, Lens’s Kovacevic tripped Tiago in the 18 yard box, forcing the referee to award Lyon a penalty.

Surprise of the night was that Juninho, Lyon’s designated penalty taker, handed the honor to Alou Diarra, who just transfered from Lens this past summer (Alou was also the guy exiled by Houllier several times this year). Diarra has never taken a penalty for Lyon before, and in fact has never scored in the league for Lyon, but he made no mistake and got his third goal of the season.

goal

Everyone is thrilled that Govou finally scored.

And that was all in the first half!

The second half was a lot slower. Lyon took their foot off the accelerator and were just content to pass the ball back and forth, though Toulalan and Benzema had two good opportunities to increase the lead. Lens, on the other hand, were utterly demoralized (again) and looked like they wanted the match to be over as soon as possible.

Lyon is now twenty points ahead of second place. Sick.

The goals:

Benzema was fantastic today, and he had several jogo bonito moments, with stepovers, feints, etc. He’s quickly becoming my favorite player, and to me, he was Lyon’s best player tonight. In fact, I was happy with everyone!!! It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that way, and I’m even feeling a little fondness creep back into my heart for Houllier.

Just a little. I don’t want to get too carried away.

Benzema

Benzema is four years younger than I am, but that’s not stopping me from crushing on him.

Sam will have more information about the rest of Ligue 1, but because Lens failed to get a single point from the match, they dropped to third but are still in a CL spot thanks to Bordeaux’s loss to Nantes. So Marseille can finally shut up about match fixing conspiracies because they are now second thanks to Lyon’s win today.

Okay, so about the party…

Astute reader Thomas was correct - Aulas’s big surprise was a pair of lions jumping through a huge “6″ that was lit on fire. The entire stadium was dark, and they brought in a real lion tamer and everything, with a round steel cage set up in the middle of the lawn.

The lion, as some of you might be aware, is one of the city’s symbols and Lyon’s mascot (along with several other teams). I wish I could have been there to see the circus personally, instead of being forced to watch it on Setanta.

Maybe for the BIG party against Nantes (poor fellows have officially been relegated), Aulas will bring in the entire zoo!

Another cool thing that Aulas did was bringing out OL’s ladies team to be honored, which was really thoughtful. He might seem like an arrogant ass, but Aulas has also invested a great deal into developing the ladies side, who have been dominating their league and will probably win the title like their male counterparts.

Pictures from the festivities:

OLWEB