France
Ligue 1
Sunday 2nd March 2025
Kick Off 15.00 On Time!
Olympique Lyonnais 2 Stade Brestois ‘29 1, attendance 47,804
15’ 0-1 (pen)
24’ 1-1
81’ 2-1
@ Groupama Stadium (Parc Olympique Lyonnais)
10 Avenue Simone Veil
69150 Decines – Charpieu
€25 Admission + €1 Booking Fee, Print at Home Ticket
No Programme.
As we were staying in Lyon, getting to today’s game should have been more straightforward than it was. With work taking place on the most direct public transport route (had an e-mail from the club informing me of this!) from the city out to the stadium, to the east of the city, it meant an alternate route was required, taking the metro Line D to Grand Blanche and then tram T5 to Eurexpo, from where free shuttle busses ran to the stadium.
The Groupama Stadium, named Parc Olympique Lyonnais prior to the sponsorship deal, is the third largest stadium in France and was opened in January 2016, with an all seated capacity of 59,186 and hosted games in that year’s European Championships as well as the 2018 U.E.F.A. Europa League Final. It replaced their former Stade de Gerland home, which is still in use for rugby union, which I had visited back in December 2013 (1-1 versus Toulouse att. 29,152 in Ligue 1) on a 3 match train trip from my then home in Brussels, taking in F.C. Nantes on the Tuesday and Stade Rennais on the Wednesday, before rounding things off here on the Thursday, followed by a ridiculously early train back to Brussels the following morning, meaning I was back at our apartment before 10.30am!
Olympique Lyonnais only won their first Ligue 1 title in 2002, which triggered a remarkable run of seven consecutive titles, but they’ve yet to add to that since. They’ve also won the Coupe de France five times and have twice reached the semi-finals of the U.E.F.A. Champions League. Qualification for European football is a regular occurrence these days and they came into this sitting sixth in the league table, whilst Stade Brestois were three places below them, struggling to match their feat of last season, in which they qualified for the Champions League, but having made the play off round following the league stage, found themselves paired with fellow French side Paris Saint-Germain, who hammered them 10-0 on aggregate!
Brest got off to a perfect start today, scoring with a V.A.R. awarded penalty after fifteen minutes, although it only took Lyon nine minutes to draw level, when a through ball was dinked over the ‘keeper from the corner of the six yard box by Alexandre Lacazette (ex Arsenal). Brest thought they’d edged back in front in the final minute of the first half, but the goal was ruled out for offside. Both sides went for the win in the second half and following a build up of pressure, it finally went the way of the hosts with nine minutes left, when Lacazette scored his second goal of the game, touching in a cross from the right at the near post that found the far corner of the net. Unlike yesterday, where Nice appeared to have no supporters whatsoever at Saint-Etienne, at least there were 70 away supporters following Brest today, although they probably hadn’t travelled all the way from Normandy, some 430 miles to the west.
After the game, the organisation in queuing for the shuttle busses back to the tram connection was superbly run, and even better, our bus back to Eurexpo dropped us off with a wait of under five minutes for the next tram to depart (only three an hour according to the timetable) back towards the city.
