Olympique Lyonnais makes it into the final of the Coupe de la Ligue, 1-0

OL defeated Le Mans yesterday in the Coupe de la Ligue, which is a tournament among the teams in the first division, the Ligue 1. It's a smaller tournament and doesn't involve teams from all over the nation, as the much more prestigious "Coupe de France" cup, where semi-professional teams sometimes score upsets over the larger and much stronger professional teams.

Nevertheless, OL booked its place in the final, in the Stade de France in Paris (I was there! it's a huge stadium, where they played the final of the 1998 World Cup) sometime in late March, on an early score by (this is an odd one) one of their defenders, Eric Abidal.

Overall, the excellent teamwork and the relentless attack by OL kept Le Mans on edge all night and they had only a few chances to score, compared to the number of opportunities that OL was able to make (but not convert).

For me, it was also a treat to see Le Mans, as there was a Japanese player, Daisuke Matsui, who's been playing with them as a first-stringer for two and a half years now. Watching his speed and his consistency on the left side made me wonder why the Japanese national team coach Zico left him out of the team for the World Cup final, but it just so happens that often the players who "deserve" to be picked sometimes don't get chosen because of personality differences or just bad luck.

It was nice to see my first game of the year for OL. It was freezing up there in the nosebleed seats but I'm gonna stick it out for the rest of the season. Allez OL! (= "OL, ganbare!")

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Although it looks like a fairly full stadium there was only about 28,000 present there and there were gaping holes in the lower rows and in the visitors seats on the south side of the stadium.

The white flags that you see in the second picture were compliments of the club and have the OL logo on them. At the beginning of the game, to see these maybe 10,000 people waving white OL flags ....!