Lyon Looking For a Juventus Miracle As Pressure Mounts

Parc Olympique Lyonnais was built for nights like this. It was always club president Jean-Michel Aulas’ baby, envisaging a way for Lyon to grow internationally as well as domestically. On Tuesday night, it will host its biggest night since its January inauguration when Juventus roll into town.

The extent of Aulas’ obsession to get to this point has been clear for years, as OL alumnus Miralem Pjanic acknowledged while he got his first look at his old club’s impressive new pad. “Thanks to this new stadium, Lyon will improve,” the midfielder said at Juve’s pre-match press conference, per Football Italia. “The president has very clear ideas in that regard.”

Playing Juve is a significant moment. Lyon will see the serial Italian champions as a benchmark—not just on the pitch, but off it—as an example of a club that has made the most of a new facility, in terms of commerce plus sheer atmosphere and prestige.

During the protracted construction of Parc OL, which was subject to over 100 judicial challenges, Aulas talked repeatedly about wanting to ape the self-sufficient stadium-led financing model of Bayern Munich or Arsenal (including to News Tank in 2015, as recounted by Le Figaro, in French). Juve are an even more modern example.  

There’s just one problem—what’s on the pitch. Not for the first time, the club’s supporters are asking themselves what the worth of having such an impressive stadium is if the club doesn’t have a team fit to grace it. For all the evident quality on the club’s playing staff, the sporting direction of OL is a growing cause for concern.

Friday’s defeat at leaders OGC Nice left a mark, not only for the fact it left Lyon 10 points from the summit and was their sixth reverse in 12 matches, but for its timing. The extra 24 hours afforded by moving the fixture for television for Champions League preparation is of limited value when your visitors are the all-conquering Juve, and especially when a chance to reflate your fragile confidence has been frittered away.

Lyon are eighth in Ligue 1, but of more relevance—given the mountainous task that faces them this week in the shape of Massimiliano Allegri’s team—they sit in third place in Group E, a point behind Sevilla, their chief rivals for (one would safely assume) the second qualification spot.

After spurning a series of presentable chances—a theme for Lyon’s season so far—against the side that sit third in La Liga above Barcelona, in the pair’s first confrontation three weeks ago in Andalucia, Les Gones have to scrap to get what they can from back-to-back matches with Juve. In comparison, Jorge Sampaoli and …

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