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TURIN, Italy — There is a cliché that this is just Olympique Lyonnais’ world and we’re all living in it, but there is substance in the trite.
Lyon might not have been perfect in Saturday’s pulsating Champions League final, but their 3-1 win over Barcelona was a convincing and richly deserved one. From Amandine Henry’s sublime curler less than ten minutes in to the staunch and resolute defending of the perennial champions throughout the last ten minutes, Lyon proved that their strengths are to be found from the top to the bottom of the team.
In Lyon’s second goal and eventual game-winner, Ada Hegerberg’s header widened the open gap when she slipped behind Mapi Leon half way through the first half. In the moments that followed, panic overcame a Barcelona team that possibly saw the match slipping away early on, and some calamitous defending opened the door for Catarina Macario to nudge a third home ten minutes later, all before the half-time break.
For Barcelona, the proceedings may have looked like déjà vu.
Before the final 2020-21 final against Chelsea, the biggest day in Barcelona’s history was the day they reached their first Champions League final. It was the day the well-crafted team from Spain’s Northeast put in their bid to be supreme rulers of Europe, to unseat then-champions Lyon. Yet, the match was over before it began — the goals from Lyon had come like body blows, or a thick red stamp thumping down on Barcelona’s application for European glory: “DENIED” it read over and over.
Two years later, Barcelona got another shot at the trophy — it’s new biggest day couldn’t be spoiled by Lyon again as the seven-time Champions League victors had dispatched at the quarterfinal stage of the tournament by Paris Saint-Germain, who themselves were knocked out by Barcelona. A year later though — on a Saturday ripe with humidity at Allianz Stadium in Turin, Italy — the Catalans were again facing down their biggest day. This time it was about retaining their…
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Source : espn
