OL locker room on the brink of crisis

Although they managed to reverse a rather complicated situation on Friday evening against Strasbourg (4-3), Lyon have experienced some tense last few days in the locker room. Atmosphere.

Friday night at Groupama Stadium, as the match between Olympique Lyonnais and Racing Club de Strasbourg reached the hour mark, the picture was very bleak for the locals. Trailing 1-3 by the Alsatians, Pierre Sage’s men seemed stunned and well on their way to a third defeat in a row in as many matches played since the start of the new Ligue 1 season. Finally winning by the skin of their teeth (4-3) thanks to several individuals, Alexandre Lacazette, Malick Fofana and Gift Orban in the lead, the Gones spared themselves a crisis. Internally, the atmosphere had been very tense until then.

Follower of the Rhone club for The TeamHugo Guillemet looked back on the days and weeks spent under tension in the locker room, firstly talking about Pierre Sage and his reaction to his team’s disastrous start to the season. He was a little scared because he is in a completely different job (than last season, editor’s note). He was in a rescue job and he moved to a project job. It has nothing to do with it. He had to take on all the preparation. Integrated physical preparation. There are defenders of this kind of preparation, there are also detractors. Maybe the players are not athletically ready enough, I don’t know. In any case, in the first two games it was a bit noticeable. He was scared, he took it badly. »

Tension between players and managers

And the journalist continues by broadening his thinking. “(Pierre Sage) spoke a lot about what was happening above (at the level of the OL management, editor’s note)from a transfer point of view. Players who didn’t know if they were going to stay and especially, players who didn’t know if the other one next to them was going to leave, was going to stay. It created an atmosphere that was not at all the same as last season. Last year they made this comeback precisely because between the staff and the players, there was a very good atmosphere. They had completely lost it at the start of the season. »

A tense context which therefore had a negative impact on Lyon’s performances during the first two days and which almost continued on Friday against Strasbourg. Enough to make Hugo Guillemet wonder about the rest of the events. I don’t know if this slightly crazy match will allow them to regain serenity, plus it’s combined with the end of the transfer window, but over the last two weeks, it was very tense between certain players and certain managers and it was very complicated to work during the week. (…) The level of the week (during training) was not good, because there were players who didn’t have their heads on OL. “The near future will tell whether things have returned to normal.