France in the Champs League: Lyon falls flat and goes out

By: Sam | March 6th, 2007

Favourite Barcelona loses to Liverpool, favourite Inter loses to Valencia, and, argh, favourite Lyon loses to AS Roma. Not in style, mind you. I was in woodshop and social classes when this was going on, but from what I’ve gathered Lyon offered a pretty poor showing. Two brilliant goals from the lethal pair that is Totti and Mancini played the part of the dagger. Videos are below.

OL’s misfortunes looked written in stone right from the get-go, when Daniele De Rossi’s goal six minutes into the game was ruled out due to an earlier foul by Totti. Juninho’s strike two minutes before that had provoked a fine save from Doni and a smart play by Mexès to deny the home side the early advantage. The next ten minutes proved irritating for Lyon, who saw three efforts by Squillaci and Govou twice miss the net. Then came the argh moment. Chivu found Tonetto rather nicely, and the recipient flew down the left flank and crossed perfectly to a so-wide-open-you-wonder-what-the-hell-the-defenders-are-doing Francesco Totti, who placed a textbook header past Coupet who had slim to no chances of stopping it.

Nothing that exciting happened until twenty-two minutes later, when something quite exciting happened. Mancini, taking his time, approached Réveillère like Steve Irwin approaching a crocodile. Baddabing, baddaboom, after doing the FIFA Street thing with his crazy step-overs, he lazered a shot on Coupet’s short side into the top corner. Two-nil, and an almost unsurpassable deficit.

Back from the locker rooms Lyon looked slightly more ready to play, with Kallström and Wiltord coming in for Diarra and Govou. Doni was sharp in the first five minutes to deny Wiltord and Juninho once again. Remember the sea of yellow (Oh my god, I can’t believe you were so immature to think of it that way) in the first leg? Well, the second half did its best to live up to the Stadio Olimpico game. Tiago was the first booked on 57 minutes with a crap tackle Totti. Not much later, Kallström delivered quite the cracker that Doni saved with impressive form. Cris then got booked for a late tackle.

With twenty minutes remaining, Benzema, who had entered in the stead of Réveillère to bring all the offense OL could muster, was a few centimeters away from scoring on his first opportunity. Two yellows followed, one to Kallström for unsporstmanlike behaviour and one to Perrota for a love tap on Juninho. In injury time, with Lyon none the closer, Fred lost his temper and got carded after Perrotta saw yellow for wasting time. Final score: Two-nil to Roma.

The headlines say it all:
OLWeb.fr: L’OL tombe de haut (Lyon falls from high up)
LFP.fr: C’était la grande Rome (It was the grand Rome)
Eurosport.fr: Lyon, la désillusion (Lyon, the disillusion)
Football.fr: Dévoré par la Louve (Devoured by the wolf)

Said Gérard Houllier (Translated from French): I can’t really tell if they’re superior to us, what I’ll remember is that they were much more realistic, especially in the first half. We had a few chances, we just didn’t know how to capitalize on them. In contrast, they got two, and they got two goals. The crucial point was the second goal. Because then, it became Mission Impossible, to do something like that, to eliminate Roma. In this type of match, you need your players to be big. I think that today, we were missing something, we weren’t fresh.

As you’ll notice, commentators Thierry Gilardi and Jean-Michel Larqué from TF1 are known for their die-hard support for Lyon. As much as I agree with the better part of what they say, I just love it when they’re depressed.

Totti vs Lyon
envoyé par REM-Y

Lyon – Roma | 0-2 Mancini
envoyé par ChrissyUnited