lose something, babe, risk something (Lyon - Fleury Postgame Thoughts)
Where the fuck was this Lyon last week?
It's always been true that this team plays better when vexed. They need their feelings hurt, they need to get pissed off, because it brings something out in them. They're better for it in many ways. You would have thought the possibility of not playing in a final would have brought that out in them, but apparently mediocre performances are now deemed acceptable standards.
This team got a lot of backlash after the semi-final loss, and I think it was good for them, I do. There's a somewhat flimsy argument that players should be protected at all costs. I get it in theory but fans should be able to hold players accountable for their performances. If you can say when a team played well, you should also be able to say when they played badly.
And there was a lot of the latter. There was a lot of "get rid of Bompastor" (still true), "sell the dead weight players" (also still true), and more importantly, "this team was a disgrace". The fans were frustrated and disappointed and let their feelings be known. I think that's a good thing. Hold your team accountable when they fall short of the standards you know they are capable of meeting.
I think it's necessary to do that because we saw in Friday's game what happens when Lyon does meet those standards. We saw some really good sequences of play. The movement was better, the passing was crisper. They genuinely looked better. it was nice to see Lyon being, well, Lyon again.
The standout player was obviously Dabritz. She's really become such a big game player, and is genuinely fun to watch. She's just a no-nonsense player, keeps her head down, does her job, and will do her upmost best to drag Lyon over the finish line. She's starting to show some really interesting leadership qualities too. I wonder if she will become like Endler, what the team psychiatrist referred to as a "quiet leader" in that they aren't necessarily vocal / giving big speeches, but players follow by example.
Dabritz flies under the radar a lot of the time, but I think her profile will grow. My true German royalty player. (Can I make royal monarchy jokes considering the Kate Middleton scandal going on? Ehh, why not)
It was nice to keep a clean sheet again though once more I fucking hate how everyone uses "le clean sheet" every time their goalkeeper does the minimum. It's so, so fucking annoying, especially because it was taken out of context. Anyway, defense was good, though I do think Gilles could have done better. She wasn't bad, but when you compare her with her top form, the level definitely wasn't the same. M'Bock is getting back to her pre-injury form, which is always nice to see. Bacha was a little inconsistent but it was nowhere near as inconsistent as the Coupe de France semifinal. Carpenter didn't really do anything which stood out, which is more a reflection on the defense not really having much to do for most of the game than anything else.
Van de Donk was good but not great. It's one of those situations where she played well, could have played better, but was still a good performance. The scuffle at the end which resulted in not one, not two, but three Lyon players having to intervene did make me laugh a little, especially because the audio picked up Bompastor going "Daan Daan Daan DAAN" as soon as van de Donk got up from the foul. Van de Donk is similar to Lyon in that she plays better when she is a little pissed off. Again, not her best performance ever, but she was good, it must be said.
So it was a good win, a good performance. Have they played better? Sure. But they've played worse, especially the horror show that was last week, so it's nice to see Lyon looking like themselves again before the trip to Benfica next week. Bompastor said in the postgame that she's been following Benfica closely, so we'll see that actually translates to the field or not.
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