“The feat turned into a nightmare”, for Lyon, who is not about to digest the English penalty

The prospect of remake of the superb 2022 Champions League final between OL and FC Barcelona (3-1) made all Lyon supporters salivate. We were approaching 11:30 p.m. Thursday when they screamed their joy, in the visitor parking lot at Stamford Bridge, when Sara Däbritz scored an unexpected second goal (0-2, 110th). The defeat (0-1) of the quarter-final first leg of C1 was going to be erased, after an intense European fight, and Barça was going to appear in the semi-finals.

Very serene during the extension in London, the partners of Wendie Renard did not even suffer a real opportunity in the final minutes. At the end of the additional time of this extension, the Blues winger Lauren James was even going to lock up one last time at the corner of the surface, accompanied by Vicki Becho and Ellie Carpenter. The Croatian referee Ivana Martincic quietly let this duel play out (at 5’40” on the video below), before being about to whistle the end of the match after Lyon’s dismissal.

Yes, but the VAR decided otherwise. After more than two minutes of imbroglio, the time of the consultation of the images, Ivana Martincic decided against it, relying on a slight contact of Vicki Becho, with her left leg, on Lauren James, before this one don’t crumble. The penalty converted by Maren Mjelde (1-2, 120th + 8) then the failures during the series of shots on goal by Wendie Renard and Lindsey Horan (4-3) then destroyed the dreams of a ninth European crown of this Lyon group. Suffice to say that this epilogue went very badly, at the end of the night, for Jean-Michel Aulas. On OL Play, the Lyon president immediately pointed out “a feeling of injustice”, with “a fact of the game which is visibly questionable, very open to criticism, and which upsets a magnificent evening”.

“James is only waiting for one thing, it’s to collapse”

“The feat turned into a nightmare”, continues JMA, who had a busy Thursday, after having worked for the formalization of Hervé Renard at the head of the women’s selection. He then split a historical parallel with another famous European quarter-final of his club (in 2005): “I have too much trouble, it reminds us of the boys the sad game of Eindhovenwith this penalty which had not been whistled on Nilmar”.

His coach Sonia Bompastor, who felt “a lot of frustration”, at the microphone of OL Play, came to the same conclusion: “The intervention of the VAR came to spoil all this good work”. She developed her perception of this action of the 122nd minute of play costing so much, with necessarily in passing a risk-taking of the young attacker Vicki Becho (19 years old).

With my experience as a former player, I know that Chelsea was in a somewhat desperate situation at that time. James is in the box and she’s just waiting for one thing, to collapse so that the referee whistles a penalty. It’s the only possibility for James, and what’s frustrating is that the referee doesn’t whistle, it’s the VAR calling on her. We’re a little down, we need to digest that. »

Sonia Bompastor will be able to rely on her emblematic leaders, like Ada Hegerberg, to remobilize the team and try to conquer yet another D1-Coupe de France double. The Norwegian striker confided to the UEFA website : “We have been spoiled in the Champions League so far with all these incredible successes. It’s a terrible defeat for us tonight, but we have to accept it and keep our heads up. They will also have to avoid dissecting 872 times this penalty that Didier Drogba could have qualified as “fucking disgrace”in this same lair of Stamford Bridge.


source site