There is what falls under the Champions League, in essence totally crazy, and what belongs to 2020, a crazy year. Between the eternal story of the chicken and the egg, PSG and Lyon reach the semi-finals together, a first for French football, such a long wait for everyone: twenty-five years for Paris, ten years for OL.
Perhaps the very nature of this test, capable of seeing Lucas score a hat-trick at Ajax with Tottenham or Liverpool go up three goals in Barcelona, adds to the confinement-deconfinement linked to the unprecedented Covid-19 crisis to create this crazy and incredible space-time which has already engulfed Italy, Spain and England. A last Champions League square without them, this has not happened since 1991. Everyone now imagines Bayern Munich winning the Champions League on August 23 in Lisbon. We wouldn't bet our payroll on that.
Two years after a world champion title that few had seen take shape, two French clubs are at the gates of the final of the biggest club event. They can even compete for it, which would ensure France only its second C1 after the coronation of Marseille in 1993. It would be absolutely brilliant, delicious and above all unthinkable a few weeks ago. And would give the opportunity to Kylian Mbappé to ironize on those who qualify our championship as "Farmers League", the Farmers League ...
One of the keys, freshness
When on April 30, the Professional Football League pronounced the final stop of the championship, two men swallowed askew. One ended up screaming, Jean-Michel Aulas, the president of Lyon, when the other, Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, his counterpart in Paris, faithful to his media discretion, preferred to grumble and stir behind the scenes.
The two bosses thought that France, on the orders of Emmanuel Macron with the powerful lobbying of Noël Le Graët, the president of the Federation, had just shot himself in the foot for the European Cup. Its organizer, UEFA, was convinced to overcome it and did not at all appreciate the position of the French authorities.
Three and a half months later, half of the survivors of the event speak the language of Molière, with a 1st club and another 7th at the time of the final clap. It is obviously Lyon, by the name of the eliminated opponents (Juventus Turin, Manchester City), the absence of international stars in its workforce and its solid but average economic power, which impresses the most. Like the other surprise guest, RB Leipzig, 3rd in the last German championship which went to the end after five weeks of physical preparation.
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This is one of the keys - the freshness - of this baroque summer of football, upset in its certainties. But it's ultimately very football, a game that cannot be explained really, is theorized but where anything can happen at any second of a match. It seems that "impossible is not French". It's always time to apply it.