Lyon ‘team spirit’ good enough to knock out Man City
LISBON, PORTUGAL (AP): LYON AND their group of mostly unknown players proved good enough to knock out Pep Guardiola and his rich Manchester City squad yesterday.
The modest French team pulled off their latest Champions League upset by defeating Man City and their high-profile players 3-1 in the quarter-finals, keeping alive their surprising title run in Europe’s top club competition.
It took another impressive collective performance, similar to the one that eliminated Cristiano Ronaldo’s Juventus in the Round of 16, for Lyon to advance to their first Champions League semi-final in a decade.
“I’m proud of my players. We believed in ourselves,” Lyon coach Rudi Garcia said. “We knew we weren’t favourites and we were playing a top team. Above all our success was down to our team spirit. Everyone worked for each other and the substitutes helped a lot.”
The team that finished only seventh in the French league will now face yet another powerhouse, Bayern Munich, which are coming off a stunning 8-2 rout of Barcelona.
Lyon were eliminated by Bayern in the 2010 semi-finals, when they lost 4-0 on aggregate to the German club, after the French team had beaten Real Madrid in the Round of 16.
Moussa Dembélé was man of the match for Lyon yesterday, scoring two late goals to seal the team’s return to the semi-finals.
Ivory Coast forward Maxwel Cornet had opened the scoring in the first half to give Lyon the lead going into the break. Kevin De Bruyne equalised for Man City in the 69th before Dembélé got his double.
Lyon needs to win the Champions League this season to return to the tournament in 2020-21. Their seventh-place finish in the shortened French league left them out of any European competition next season.