OL wins again! 13th straight victory, 1-0 over Nancy

An unusual Sunday night home game, starting at 21:00 local time because of television (the other match being broadcast started at 5:30). I studied until right before the game, then caught a combination of bicycle/metro (2 transfers) and got to the park in under 30 minutes.

Again, sitting in the end zone bleachers I had to ward off the high winds and even put my hood on to keep out the cold, but it was an exciting tense game with OL opening up the scoring and holding on to the lead to win 1-0.

With second-place Marseilles losing and their opponents, third-placed Nancy, losing tonight, OL has opened up a huge lead not even halfway into the season, 11 and 12 points between them and these two teams. That gives them a large cushion, but I hope that they can maintain the intensity and not become complacent about such a margin.

With several of their forwards injured, their star midfielder Juninho was playing up in the front in an attacking position and they juggled around some of the people in the midfield. Unlike some of the other matches that I've been too OL lacked some of the bluster that helps them dominate matches, but they played hard on defense and gave the opposition few chances to score (I can't remember the other side getting off too many shots from play).

Today was the fifth time this year that they had "guichets fermés," or "closed ticketboxes" which means that they were completely sold out. While some stadiums in Spain have upwards of sixty or eighty thousand seats, Gerland here in Lyon is a cosy little 40,000 seats and even up in the nosebleed seats where I sit you have an excellent view of the stadium down below.

I saw the same guys sitting around me that I always see, the same season ticket holders. Nobody's ever said anything to me, but I suppose that one of these days they'll get up enough nerve to ask, what the heck I'm doing here at the games all the time.