Lyon will perhaps not benefit from this status for long, both because it faces PSG on Sunday evening, and because the Ile-de-France club has a match in hand, but the Rhone club is indeed the one which has taken the most points in Ligue 1 in 2024 (25, compared to 23 for Paris). Pierre Sage’s team, transformed at the start of the year, has even been leader of the championship since the 20th day.
OL have just won four of their last five matches, no longer have to worry about their survival and are starting to dream of Europe, which would have been heresy in December. Would he have become irresistible?
Not exactly. The victory against the Breton club after conceding three goals in seven minutes after returning from the locker room is a perfect illustration: OL do not control everything. “We conceded two goals from set pieces, one goal from a quick attackrecalled Pierre Sage to the press on Friday. We made avoidable mistakes near our area, we lost a ball in a positional attack then took a quick attack. So we have things to adjust in our offensive game and in our way of defending, that’s the lesson we learn. It’s not that we wrote this scenario, it’s that we managed it.”
Our game is not always up to par
The kind of scenario that we enjoy on the sofa or at the stadium, without a doubt. Perhaps a little less on the sidelines, where the impassive Pierre Sage has been putting his heart to the test since taking office. Because OL-Brest was not an exception. One figure illustrates this perfectly: no one has taken as many points as Lyon (13) after being behind since the 44-year-old technician took office.
The Rhone club wins, but is seriously heckled. In Nantes (1-3), OL turned everything around in the last quarter of an hour but Matthis Abline and his team had several break points. In Toulouse (2-3), the Gones were still trailing 2-1 at the start of the last quarter of an hour. Against Nice (1-0), Orel Mangala scored on the only shot on target for his team, which conceded 20 attempts and suffered a lot.
“The epic of OM took everyone by surprise”
Continuing the list like this would be tedious and it is simpler to do the opposite: the victory at Lorient (0-2) on March 9 is the only one that we would describe as calm for Lyon in Ligue 1 this year. “There are matches where we could be more efficient. When I take the example of Brest or Toulouse where we were leading, we could have managed the matches better“, recognized Maxence Caqueret, who has certainly not forgotten that his team has lost three times since January in L1, or on average one game in four.
The Lyon midfielder and his teammates are still conceding a lot of goals – 10 in the last 6 championship matches – are experiencing real gaps like against Brest, and are relying a lot on their mentality, their “secret” according to Caqueret himself. Lyon thus seems to be riding on an admittedly exceptional momentum more than on real certainties – even if these tend to multiply. “Our game is not always up to what we are looking for, but we are seeing things more and more regular,” thus analyzes Sage in the columns of L’Equipe.
Another doubt against the big guys
Still, if we talk about consistency, it often comes down to the same man: Alexandre Lacazette, third top scorer in Ligue 1 with 15 goals. “He’s the one who carried the team for a long time and he still does,” admits Caqueret.
The Lyon captain has scored in eight of the ten matches he has played in the league this year and it is no coincidence that he was absent in the only Ligue 1 match in which Lyon did not score in 2024, against Lens (0-3), on March 3. A defeat against the Sang et Or which had as much illustrated this offensive ultra-dependence on the “General” as Lyon’s difficulties in keeping up with the pace when the level rises.
Alexandre Lacazette, scorer against Nantes
Credit: Getty Images
Against Lens, OL were clearly dominated as had been the case a good month earlier against Rennes (2-3), where the Gones were trailing 3-0 at half-time in front of their home crowd. There were victories in Monaco (0-1), against Marseille (1-0), Nice (1-0) and even Brest (4-3). But it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call at least half of it a heist.
What does it matter, in the end. OL needed points and took them, perhaps even more than they hoped for. But this trip to the Parc des Princes, Sunday, against a PSG undefeated for 23 matches in Ligue 1, boosted by its qualification in the last four of the Champions League, and which will not forgive it much, will be a very revealing interesting about its real progress. This Lyon, even transformed, can be pushed around by almost everyone, including Valenciennes in the Coupe de France. It remains to be seen whether he is capable of annoying everyone, including Paris.