OL got the hardest opponent possible but I am definitely gonna check out those matches to see if they can pull the upset. If they do it will be very rewarding to watch. The positive is Juventus will fill Gerland so OL should have a nice home crowd advantage. Of course if the first leg isnt close Im not watching the 2nd leg lol.
I'd say its 90-10 in favor of Juventus, and 60-40 in favor of Chelsea. Not sure if I'd trust Blanc to outsmart Mourinho, especially with Chelsea playing the second leg at home. Lyon's defense reminds me of of Marseille a few years back when the midfield always played pretty good, dominated possession but you knew in the back of your head, no matter how well they were playing, at the first given opportunity some defensive meltdown would occur.
I don't think its about out-smarting Mourinho. His team is weaker defensively than PSG's and PSG's attack is much more stronger than Chelsea's attack. Mourinho usually depends on transition football from his midfield to create quick breaks and counters, but I don't think he'll find that with Verratti and Matuidi playing their best futbol at the moment. While the likes of Oscar and Hazard have been up and down(currently) all season. PSG has too much on the field and off the field to lose to a pretty watered down Mourinho side compared to his old sides.
Salomon Kalou has said hes leaving Lille at the end of the season. See this is the reason why we dont need clubs like that in the Champions League because how are they going to replace a player like that when they have to win 2 qualifying rounds if they finish 3rd ? This is why I cant bitch about PSG and ASM clogging up 2 spots because they will keep their best players and if they dont they'll get someone else good and Lille or ASSE will replace a Kalou or Abemeyang with an overrated Ligue 1 player whos not as good.
Lyon-Juventus Turin : Les compos Lyon A.Lopes Tolisso B.Koné Umtiti Bedimo Ferri Gonalons (cap) Mvuemba Malbranque Lacazette Briand Remplaçants Vercoutre (g) Zeffane N.Sarr Danic Fekir N’Jie B.Gomis Entraîneur : R.Garde ALLEZ LYON !
B.Koné had a bad game Lyon was the better team for 85 mins ! Biševac,Gourcuff,Grenier are sorely missed and needed Lyon can be juve
Scrappy goal for Juve and disappointing loss considering it could have easily gone the other way. Lyon had the better chances but they weren't clinical enough and with a really tight game like we saw today it's the little things that count. Like being able to convert on corner kicks, which is clearly one of lyon's weak points this season. When was the last time we scored on one? Mvuemba had a decent game but he kicks his corners very low every time and it never seems to reach a Lyon player. Although we didn't have better luck lately with either Grenier or Gourcuff kicking them.
The same one I was watching. Did you think Juve was playing "well"? Seemed like they had a tough time stringing 3 passes together for large portions of the game.
Umititi was the man of the match. They wanted too long to bring Bafe on and should have not taken off Lacazette. I think its over since Juve lost only 3 times at home in 3 years.
koné did have a horrible second half, and i still can't figure out how he lost contact with the ball he needed to clear to prevent teh goal we gave up. so bisevac was indeed one of the two players sorely missing. the second was ANY of gourcuff, grenier or fofana. we didn't even NEED all three to beat juve last night, just one. and my personal choice would have been fofana. this has been our hebdomas horribilis... what regrets we can have! i sincerely feel that the football we were playing when we finally got our best 11 going* was as good as anyone's in europe after PSG and bayern. i would even have given us a chance against real barcelona or any english club. *lopes - bedimo, umtiti, bisevac, lopes - gonalons, fofana, grenier, gourcuff, lacazette, gomis
gomis should have come on a bit earlier, but the little details that really had me tearing my hair out were in extra time: first we get a corner and instead of putting it in front of goal for tolisso/koné/gonalons/gomis/briand who have ALL scored on setpiece headers this season, one of the academy kids decides to take it à la rémoise. and in the dying moments, you saw the referee was ready to whistle but since we had the ball in the red 30 he was going to give us ONE last chance to put it in the box, and no one pulled the string. finally he just decided that if we didn't want that last chance it was our loss, not his. abpfiff, game over.
Grenier and Gomis would have gave there supply of balls and passing to score unlike the Italians who were sloppy carlos tevez played like crap he really sucks he acted like a bull i really think Lyon can still knock out Juventus !get some fine away goals
It was a pleasure watching the match on FOX with 2 American announcers and no Brits. Brian McBride was good and showed no bias. There was a mention of Mvuemba having played for Portsmouth of course which I had forgot about but I looked it up and he only plyaed like 21 matches there.
Juve was definitely not playing well. Their long ball strategy is just uncreative and quite frankly lazy. But to say that Lyon was the better team for 85 minutes??? Juve created better chances to score.
I just hope Basel doesnt win it. A Swiss team winning it when a French team cant win it is beyond embrassing. I mean Lyon is a bigger club than Basel with a bigger budget and Basel beats one of the big Spanish teams 3-0 and Lyon could even beat Real Sociedad. I dont get it.
i think it was about even. juventus' long balls were very bad, and came more from laziness than purpose. both sides had their periods of dominance, juventus scored during theirs, OL didn't. i definitely feel juve underestimated lyon, and i also feel that all along they were going to be satisfied with a 0-0, which is understandable but also a little condescending.