After a setback in Reims which plunged OL to last place (0-2), Anthony Lopes made an exit which did not go unnoticed.
The worm has been in the fruit for a long time. And at the rate things are going, Fabio Grosso cannot have a miracle recipe. More than a club in need of recovery, OL is a club in need of cleaning up. HAS all levels. The course of the week is the perfect illustration of this. Plunged into the doldrums of a catastrophic start to the season against the backdrop of an institutional crisis between the all-powerful ex-president Jean-Michel Aulas and a new management in dire straits, the Rhone club continued to dig in with a clear defeat on the pitch of Reims (0-2). A setback which makes OL the bottom of Ligue 1.
The language used by Lyon executives after this poor performance says a lot about the seriousness of the situation. There was this image, on Prime Video, of Corentin Tolisso, on the verge of tears and lacking words after another bland performance. “Of course I am touched, since I was little I have been an OL supporter and I have never seen OL in this situation. And for me to be a professional footballer and to put the club in this situation, it hurts me more than anything”.
Lopes: “We are not pushing the team fully underwater”
There was also this vehement rant from Anthony Lopes to respond to clan rumors in the locker room. “ This is some great bullshit. the main people interested say they are in love with Olympique Lyonnais. When there’s fire like that at Olympique Lyonnais, we don’t push it, we don’t push the team head-on under the water. When we love OL, we push them, whether in the best or in the worst moments, we are in a very complicated moment so we have to try to get our heads above water, we cannot fall lower for the moment.” Two rooms, two atmospheres. And an underlying question: who was targeted by the OL goalkeeper?
Before this setback in Champagne, tongues had been loosened in the club environment. Some astute journalists had highlighted a fairly clear divide between the strong men in the squad. On the one hand, historical executives like Alexandre Lacazette and Corentin Tolisso, long-time friends and very affected by the current bad spiral. On the other, an emerging starlet like Rayan Cherki, not always on the same wavelength as his elders.
“ Lacazette, his frustration is very visible in the team. She weighs a lot“, explained Sofiane Zouaoui, speaking in After Foot on RMC. “ For Tolisso, it’s a question of level. It weighs heavily on some in the group who don’t understand why he has so many matches (…) Cherki takes the place that the executives don’t take. He clearly saw that the two and some of the group’s executives had resigned. So he takes a very important place in the team, because he is talkative, because he speaks loudly, because he has a sometimes mocking way of speaking. This poses a real problem in training. There has been some friction in training recently. Some players think he’s not legitimate because he doesn’t put in the effort without the ball on the field. With a defender in training, there was a mix-up…”.
A version which found a certain echo a few hours later with an explosive interview with Moussa Dembélé for Foot Mercato. Today in Saudi Arabia, the French center forward completely emptied his bag to castigate leaders “ incompetent ” And ” sly“, citing in particular Bruno Cheyrou and Vincent Ponsot. Dembélé, however, clarified that the players were not the major problem.
“ There is no locker room problem. In any case, this is not the reason for Lyon’s problems. The players all get along very well. Integration problems are far from being the major concern. I repeat, we were not good and no one was hiding. It didn’t make anyone happy. I don’t know any player who is happy to lose or not perform well. And it’s not by insulting them that things will get better. Meanwhile, management is silent and hiding. She was silent while Houssem, I and others took it all in the face.”.
It remains to be seen whether Anthony Lopes was targeting his former teammate or the club’s external environment. Certifying that the group is united is one thing, but it is enough to measure the contrast between the executives, in terms of communication, to remind us to what extent this team is not running smoothly. Fabio Grosso’s project is enormous.
