Eighth in Ligue 1, eliminated on green carpet in his first round of the Coupe de France and “only” quarter-finalist in the Europa League. This year, Olympique Lyonnais has had a very difficult season. No sporting goals achieved. Internally, it’s not much better. Peter Bosz, who arrived just over a year ago, has often been on edge. Juninho, former sports director, hastened his departure even before the very winter.
In an interview with L’Equipe, Anthony Lopes looks back on this season. The Portuguese goalkeeper of OL does not hide. “We conceded a lot of goals, we never managed to enter our objectives. At key moments of the season, we often broke the mouth, even all the time. When you let so many chances pass, you only get what you deserve.
Only, Anthony Lopes, Lyonnais since he was nine years old, cannot find solutions to the ills of OL. “When you are Olympique Lyonnais, it is not possible. You have to take 20 fewer goals to go to the Champions League. At the beginning, we were reproached for finishing the matches badly, afterwards, for doing half-time out of two… We got together, sometimes, to say that we couldn’t accept that, but we have to join the actions to the lyrics and that was more complicated.”
The international goalkeeper, 14 caps with Portugal, does not hide and puts strong words on the season of his club. “It’s very, very hard. Shame is a very strong word, but that’s it, anyway. It is unforgivable. Being OL, with the players we have in our squad, we cannot finish eighth. This season has been catastrophic for everyone, in every way. I just tell myself that it was better that everything happened at the same time.
Encouraging signs from Lyon this season all the same, but the last bastion prefers to dwell on what is wrong. “There were so many times when we said to ourselves ‘the others lost, we can come back’… But we didn’t come back, and I don’t believe in chance, nor in luck. We didn’t deserve to finish very high.”
