Lisbon- Lyon has entered their first Champions League semi-final since 2009/10 after upsetting firm favorites Manchester City in a Sunday game that ended in some controversy and technical glitches.
Maxwel Cornet opened the scoring in the 24th minute to give OL the lead against City, a team that uncharacteristically struggled to find a steady rhythm for the first half-hour. In the second 45, however, City got into the zone and created more chances. 69th minute, Kevin De Bruyne equalizes. Outstanding finish. But super-sub Moussa Dembélé soon strikes back-to-back goals in the 79th and 87th minutes.
City’s dreams of a coveted semi-final spot were immediately swept away. Between Dembélé’s two strikes, Raheem Sterling missed a sitter within 5-yards of the Lyonnais goal. Had he scored, the game would’ve been level and poised.
Cornet and Dembélé have now scored four goals against Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City in the CL, a joint-highest goal tally alongside Lionel Messi. Two-goal hero Moussa Dembélé took the Man of the Match prize for his devastatingly incredible cameo.
Despite City being a formidable force in the English Premier League over the past 3 years, Guardiola has never managed to take his team past the CL quarter-finals. After the match, he lamented, “It is what it is…one day we will break the gap to the semi-finals. Second half was okay, we were there, I had the feeling we were better, but you have to be perfect in this competition and we didn’t [do that].”
For a team that finished 7th in the 2019/20 Ligue 1 season, this victory was a huge feat. Lyon coach Rudi Garcia expressed post-victory, “We won the tactical battle as we are masters of our system of play. There are still matches to be played and hurdles to overcome and we’ll try to overcome them.”
Lyon will face German titans Bayern Munich, the same club by which they suffered a 4-0 defeat in 2009/10 CL semi-finals. They now meet on Thursday, August 20.
This also means that next week’s semis will be the first time that no team from Spain, England, and France are in the final four since the European competition rebranded itself as the Champions League in 1992. With three out of four teams eyeing their first-ever CL title, the chances are high that we see a new champion crowned this year.
Aashish Sunar is a Sub Editor for the Kathmandu Pati English covering issues on politics, marginalized community, international relations, economics, and sports. He is pursuing undergraduate degree in International Studies and Economics at the Soka University of America. You can find him at the twitter: @imAashishSunar.
Sameer SJB Rana is the News Coordinator for Kathmandu Pati English covering politics, peace, conflict, security, defense, and diplomacy issues. He’s also Founder & CEO of SportIFY Nepal, Research Assistant for Princeton University’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and Microsoft Research, and an MPA grad student at Columbia University. He tweets @sameersjbrana.
