European champions and French champions. In the space of a week, the players of Olympique Lyonnais (OL) regained their long-undeniable ascendancy in women’s football.
After the flamboyant success against FC Barcelona – disgusted title holder 3-1 in Turin in the Champions League final, Saturday May 21, for an eighth continental title – they won their fifteenth French championship on Sunday May 29. in sixteen seasons by going to win 1-0 at the Jean-Bouin stadium in Paris, against a Paris-Saint-Germain at worst, overtaken in the 3rd minute by a goal from Catarina Macario.
The calendar has decided that the season will have its epilogue at the PSG-OL summit, the most awaited poster of the women’s D1, the one that crystallizes the most tensions, the one that also summarizes the gap that separates the champion from his dolphin.
“We said to ourselves before the match that it was certainly symbolic to come here to Paris and validate our title of champions, with eight points ahead of Paris, which is not a small performance”, savored the OL coach Sonia Bompastor. “In one week apart, validating these two titles, it ends our season in apotheosis,” she concludes.
Last season, for the first time in fifteen years, the champion was called Paris and the runner-up Lyon, the consequence of a gradual rebalancing of the forces present in recent years in French women’s football. But OL, stung by this unusual rout, quickly bounced back: here they are, twenty-four months later, again at the top of the French hierarchy.
With an eight-point lead with one day to go, OL can no longer be caught. A draw would have been enough for them on Sunday, but Wendie Renard’s partners did not miss the chance to beat their rivals for the fourth time in five meetings this season.
“The seasons follow each other but are not alike. Paris pushes us to surpass ourselves, we questioned ourselves. Ending like this is beautiful, “savored the captain on Canal .
Paris must rebuild
These eight points difference, a chasm in a D1 archi-dominated by these two clubs, alone sums up the season of the two teams: almost perfect for OL, disastrous for Paris.
PSG, all the same winner of the Coupe de France, will have to rebuild everything, or almost: its coach Didier Ollé-Nicolle was sidelined after an “inappropriate gesture” towards a player, the affair of the Kheira Hamaroui’s aggression continues to pollute the locker room, and major changes are already expected in the organization chart of the women’s section.
In the workforce, the expiration of the contract of top scorer Marie-Antoinette Katoto, still the most dangerous striker on Sunday, will be the priority for the next few days. Sunday, she left the meeting limping, a priori affected in the left thigh, a concern on the eve of the list of Blue for the Euro.
The Parisian ultras still called on her to stay “in Paris”, with songs in support, not without first reminding her on a banner that “only the real ones stay”, a week after the announcement of the extension by Kylian Mbappe.
The Euro, a common objective
The spectators were just over 4,300 on Sunday evening in a sparse Jean-Bouin stadium, proof that the fervor in the Champions League this season, with several attendance records all over Europe, is still struggling to be sustainable in the French championship .
To foresee a more followed 2022-23 season, at the stadium or at a distance, the D1 will undoubtedly have to count on a successful Euro for the French in England from July 6 to 31. Still looking for their first international title, Les Bleues can now fully focus on European competition, with, for a dozen or so players present on Sunday evening, a real chance of appearing in coach Corinne Deacon’s list.
Present at Jean-Bouin, Deacon has made an appointment this Monday, at 1 p.m. on TF1, to reveal the identity of those who will be on the trip… And this time, Lyonnaises and Parisiennes will share a common objective.
