Remodelled Lyon aim to recapture European glory against Arsenal

There was a time when Lyon were the undisputed queens of Europe. Between 2016 and 2020, they won five consecutive Champions League titles. No side have won more than their record eight. But it has now been four seasons since their last European trophy, and while Barcelona have not been able to match the past dominance of their French counterparts, there is no doubt who is top of the power ­rankings now.

Lyon arrive in London hoping that this Champions League semi-final will be the opportunity to recapture some of their previous dominance. Their meeting last year with Arsenal fell to pieces in their home second leg. After winning the first-leg 2-1, they collapsed to a 4-1 loss, losing 5-3 on aggregate.

It has been all change since then. A month after the defeat, they were renamed OL Lyonnes and had a branding redesign to separate their image from the men’s team, courtesy of Michelle Kang, who bought the club back in 2023. Her arrival was about giving a team who had slipped slightly off their pedestal some new impetus. The “Lyonnes” supposedly came to Kang while she was on safari and found out that lionesses hunt more than their male counterparts. It also neatly ties them to Kang’s Women’s Super League side London City Lionesses.

They are also now managed by former Barcelona boss Jonatan Giráldez. Giráldez is widely seen as one of the best coaches in the world thanks to his incredible success at Barcelona where he won eight domestic titles and two Champions Leagues in three seasons. Kang initially poached him for Washington Spirit, her NWSL team, but he was in charge there for only 28 games before he was moved back to Europe.

It has been hard to judge exactly how good Giráldez is outside of the Barcelona ecosystem because he was in Washington so briefly. It would be wrong to put his success in Spain solely down to the players at his disposal but having Alexia Putellas, Aitana Bonmatí and Patri Guijarro in your squad is undoubtedly helpful.

“When I was in Spain, I had to play against Jona a lot,” says Sofie Svava, who joined Lyon in 2024 from Real Madrid. “He’s trying to put that [Barça] mentality into our team with the possession, getting the ball back quickly.”

Lyon midfielder Korbin Shrader describes him as “very enthusiastic” about football, as well as being “confident” and “detail-oriented”. He enjoys organising games for his squad after training like crossbar challenges, and at 34 years old, he is a year younger than his captain Wendie Renard.

His youth is a trait he shares with his Arsenal counterpart Renée Slegers, who is 37 and only two years older than her captain Kim Little. The victory she masterminded over Lyon last season saw Arsenal into a Champions League final against Barcelona, and ultimately, leaving Lisbon with the trophy.

“What we’re really good at is being in the here and now,” said Slegers on Friday. “We did that really well last year. That was a big part of achieving what we achieved. Being humble and respectful of opponents, sometimes with the unknown and sometimes with the known, and dealing with those moments.

“You’re constantly learning. As a team we go through different contexts, through different phases, and we’re all putting those things into our backpack as a team. But we have to earn it all over again. It was fantastic what we did and the way we did it, but it starts all over again, we start from zero, and it’s going to be different.”

Lyon already had some validation that they could beat Arsenal earlier in the season when they won 2-1 in the opening match of the league phase. In that game, Arsenal were unable to deal with Lyon’s press, repeatedly turning the ball over.

Haitian midfielder Melchie Dumornay was particularly ruthless in front of goal, and a strong performance in the latter stages of the UWCL would give her a boost when it comes to an attempt at prying the Ballon d’Or from Bonmatí’s firm grip.

“Last year was definitely tough on all of us,” says Svava. “We were very disappointed in ourselves. So of course there’s this feeling of revenge. We want to get out there and finish what we didn’t finish last season.”

Svava has spent time at Real Madrid and Wolfsburg among others but says the mentality at Lyon is different by virtue of the number of UWCL titles they have won. The institutional experience is undoubtedly there – Renard has been present for all eight of their previous victories. But the question is how long that holds weight as other teams catch up to their initial dominance. The balance of power between the two teams has already shifted from last year by virtue of Arsenal’s win.

Arsenal’s previous triumph in the competition had come in 2007 and they were clear underdogs. Now, it is harder to put a finger on who the favourites are. At the quarter-final stage, Arsenal came through a tough tie against London rivals Chelsea while Lyon needed extra time to overcome an often underwhelming Wolfsburg team.

“Learning from success is important,” said Slegers. “There’s often books on learning from losses or learning from failure. But that’s what we’ve tried to do when we’ve had successful periods. What is it that made us successful? Trying to understand that, knowing that we can’t copy and paste it into the future, but there’s certain things we can bring.”

In many ways that has been Lyon’s modus operandi on their journey to the peak of women’s football. When Kang changed their name, she also gave them a new motto, Nouvelle Histoire, Meme Legende, which translates to “New story, Same legend”. A loss at the semi-final stage for the second year in a row would put that legendary continuation in significant jeopardy.

Photograph by Arnaud Finistre/AFP/Getty Images