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OL players and supporters returned to Manchester United after the cruel elimination in overtime in the Europa League quarter-final Thursday evening (5-4). From the choices of Paulo Fonseca to irrationality, we try to find a path of explanation. Without success for the moment.
The question could serve as a subject of philosophy of the bac in June, but the Lyonnais decided to anticipate the school calendar to ask it from this mid-April: “Can we explain everything?” And rejuvenate a little (many) supporters and followers because this scenario – and the abyss of perplexity that he commands – reminds them of the famous “penalty on Nilmar in 2005” or the sad end of AC Milan a year later. It was already in April, when the European quarter -finals stopped there too the Lyon illusions.
Try to take the temperature of the post-match mood and you expose yourself to this type of answer: “You have good you, you can imagine …” Indeed we can imagine, between depression, silence, misunderstanding and amazement. “We heard stolen flies”, image a member of the staff, from the locker room to Old Trafford in the airport's boarding room, until landing in Lyon shortly before 4 am.
This mood (sidenous), the central defender Moussa Niakhaté displays him for once by looking for his words, he usually so talkative. We will have to wait for the third question for the Senegalese giant to synthesize a first semblance of answer: “We missed something big. We did something big too when returning to the score, an incredible scenario. I think I even forgot things that happened in the match. Return like that, we take a red, we lead 4-2 in extension … but to take three goals.”
Another player who came to the mixed zone, Corentin Tolisso: “Frankly I don't hide you that it really hurts your head. When you lead 4-2 to seven minutes from the end, you already see yourself in the semi-finals and finally, you are eliminated. It gives even more regrets.”
Eternal regrets and rare words
Their (very few) words on the (too much) ailments of the moments also reflect the impossibility for a whole staff to bring a rational explanation: “I have nothing to say”, repeats the closest actors of this after-match that they may have all anticipated when seeing the bridges of May 1 and 8 (dates of the semi-finals) worked. John Textor, at least as shot as the rest of the delegation, tried by a few words to re -mobilize everyone. Coach Paulo Fonseca also talked. Surely on the same theme.
A delegation who thought that the curse of Swiss referee Sandro Shärer, who had already met OL on April 14, 2022 at Groupama Stadium, had passed. That evening, the Lyonnais had been beaten dryly by the English (0-3), already in the quarterfinals of the Europa League.
In the 109th minute, the transformation of Alexandre Lacazette's penalty placed hers widely in the lead. At the 120th+3, the “Fergie Time” had struck, perhaps a bit helped by the penalty, which “may also not whistle,” notes a close to the group. “The details were not on our side,” pleads another member of the staff, like the second yellow at Corentin Tolisso in the 88th minute. The devil nestles in detail. And the problem is that in the niche, there was a dog (Mancunian) who bit very hard.
Fortunately, there is the 126th approaching derby. But curiously, in this special after-game, it was not too question: difficult to mix everything and already to project yourself, the legs still cut by “events”.
Paul Akouokou, a pebble in the Fonseca shoe?
But necessarily, there is no question of only including man in yellow in this unreal evening, because the choices of Paulo Fonseca will be talked about. And if it was his first size clip – Events of Lyon – Brest except – in his Lyon adventure started on January 31 on a state of grace, drawn by the rise in the classification – two points from second place and a point of the podium – and these success ratios (nine victories, a draw and three defeats in 13 games) which make him tuty the legend Gérard Houllier.
“I don't know how to read this match,” replied a regular at the Décines training center. “There is courage of the players, honor, envy, shortcomings. But, well, we must talk about the tenure of Paul Akouokou …” And therefore, in hollow, underline the absence of Nemanja Matic, at the start but also in the coaching in Lyon a week and Thursday evening in Manchester: “It would have been so precious by his experience in the end of the match, he would have been a fabulous guide in the middle of the match, torment, “adds the same source.
Paul Akouokou, the Lyon “mystery” since his arrival in the last moments of the transfer window in the summer of 2023, when Laurent Blanc wants a sentry. He will have known his last tenure before this double confrontation, on December 6, 2023, almost 18 months before! “To want to exist as a coach, he did anything,” brought a wise supporter. “And he makes you lose the match.”
On the disappointment scale, “I do not know which cursor to put it”, blows a supporter, who did not hesitate to take the car to reach Lyon in the north of England via the ferry to Calais. Nearly 6 p.m. on the outward journey and no less than 20 on the return. Can we still love football after that? But “yes” will respond hot, gentleman, elegant and cold, Corentin Toliss: “Yes, on the one hand, it is cruel, for us. For them, it is beautiful. I would have preferred to be their own this evening …”
So something happened to Old Trafford. But what? Even long hours (often white) afterwards, the OL caravan returned by plane – directly for players to the train and the plane with stopovers everywhere in the north of Europe essentially 2,652 Lyon supporters – has still not understood what happened to it.
Will they ever understand? Not sure, but this evening of April 17, 2025 undoubtedly joins those of the penalty on Nilmar at the Philips Stadium in April 2005 or the cruel end in 2006 in San Siro in front of Milan. Twenty years later, we are still talking about it. So let's go for (at least) twenty years to look for, the why of the how of an unreal evening. Largely the time to find something to fill the subject with philosophy: “Can we explain everything?”
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