Olympique Lyonnais – Juventus
Olympique Lyonnais faces Juventus at the Groupama Stadium in a game from the 1/8-finals of the Champions League. The French club approach this tie in the position of an underdog, but it doesn’t mean that Les Gones do not have their own chances to do something significant.
After some run of negative results, Olympique Lyonnais finally started to fix their performance. Their win against Olympique Marseille in Coupe de France was followed four points won against Strasbourg and Metz in the Ligue 1. Yes – Lyonnais are still 7th in the league and that’s not perfect, but maybe the manager Rudi Garcia is finding a way to improve his team.
On Friday Les Gones visited Metz in a match from Ligue 1 and celebrated a 2-0 win at the Stade Saint-Symphorien. Lyonnais scored two goals at the end of the two halves when Moussa Dembele and Houssem Aouar found the net.
It’s of course not a secret that Juventus will enter this tie in the role of a huge favourite. The Bianconeri are trying to win the Champions League for a first time since 1996 and they have a team good enough to do it. Nobody can argue about that.
In the group stage Juventus lost points in just one game – during the 2-2 draw with Atletico in Madrid. After this the Old Lady won all of their games in the group.
On Saturday Juventus had a good warm-up for this visit to France. Maurizio Sarri’s team visited SPAL in the Serie A and secured a 2-1 win. Cristiano Ronaldo and Aaron Ramsey scored for the Italian champions.
A lot of people would be surprised if Juventus does not eliminate Olympique Lyonnais from the Champions League. We can say that Juve were pretty lucky with the draw, but not the luckiest – the French team is still a dangerous one.