Olympic Lyonnais (Lyon) have produced an excellent counter-attacking football to stun Manchester City with a 3-1 win in the UEFA Champions League (UCL) quarter-final match played at the Avelade stadium in Lisbon, Portugal.
The French club had not won in their past three meetings against Pep Guardiola’s Man City.
Luck was however on their side on Saturday night as the Ligue 1 team countered to maximum effect and got rewarded with goals from Maxwel Cornet and Moussa Dembele (brace) to nullify Kevin De Bruyne’s solitary effort.
The win means they have qualified into the semi-finals of the competition for the first time in 10 years.
Lyon named an unchanged side from their surprise triumph at Juventus where they got an early goal, and it did the trick against City with the opener on 24 minutes. Cornet curled in his fourth goal against City from 20 yards out after latching on to a loose ball from Eric Garcia’s block.
City were dominant but waited until after the half hour to start creating chances, but the French side managed to go into the halftime break with their lead intact.
The English side continued their relentless pursuit for an equaliser in the second period and finally got a chance, with Raheem Sterling doing excellently well to dribble Jason Denayer on the touchline before he laid the ball for de Bruyne to find the bottom corner for 1-1.
Dembele restored Lyon’s lead on 79 minutes. The former Celtic man latched on to a through ball from Houssem Aouar and ran free of an absent City defence before slotting beyond Ederson Moraes for 2-1.
Sterling, excellent on the night, however missed a sitter, placing his shot sky high from six yards with an open net to aim at, prompting Guardiola to threw himself to the turf in total disbelief.
City, however, got punished for the atrocious miss immediately by Lyon who increased their lead to 3-1 three minutes from the end.
Lyon will now face Bayern Munich, who humiliated Barcelona 8-2 on Friday, in the semi-final encounter next week Wednesday.
By Jonathan Ledger/TheCable
