Lyon and the danger of multi-club ownership
The Athletic FC Podcast
The Athletic
4.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 23 November 2023
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After seven consecutive Ligue 1 titles in the early 2000s, we’d forgive you for thinking Lyon are still firmly a part of European football’s aristocracy
But after 11 games this season - they’re bottom of the table, their world-famous pool of academy talent seems to have dried up, and after losing one of the most influential football executives of this century could a genuine 'legacy club' soon be a second-division side?
Ayo Akinwolere is joined one final time this week by The Athletic’s Matt Slater & Adam Crafton, plus our German football writer Raphael Honigstein joins in to connect the dots with our fifth club, Hertha Berlin.
Produced by Adonis Pratsides
Additional Production: Mike Stavrou
Executive Producer: Adey Moorhead
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic |
| 0:03.0 | After seven consecutive league earned titles in the early 2000s, |
| 0:12.0 | we'd forgive you for thinking Leon as still firmly a part of European football's aristocracy. |
| 0:18.0 | Junino, unstoppable! Who's in the bandsema, his aristocracy. But after 11 games this season, they're bottom of the table. |
| 0:34.6 | Their world famous pool of academy talent seems to have dried up, |
| 0:38.3 | and after losing one of the most influential football executives of this century, could a genuine |
| 0:44.4 | legacy club soon be a second division side? I'm Ayahu Akimueleri. Welcome to the Athletic |
| 0:50.9 | Football Podcast. |
| 1:05.1 | Okay, so Leon are up next. |
| 1:07.9 | This is part four of the Athletics Crisis Club series, |
| 1:12.2 | examining the financial state of five European football clubs all week. |
| 1:17.1 | So today I'm joined one last time by the Athletic Senior Football News Reporter Matt Slater and Adam Crafton is in the studio as well. We'll also hear from German football writer |
| 1:21.6 | Raphael Hunningstein a little later on on the show on our fifth club, Herta Berlin. |
| 1:28.1 | I mean, they've gone beyond being in crisis to just being perpetually terrible, really. |
| 1:33.7 | The odd good spell disrupting the misery. |
| 1:37.3 | Right. Let's start with Leon. Adam, in short, if you can, why are Leon on our list? |
| 1:44.0 | A difficult one to do in short, but that's why we have the podcast to try and hopefully explain it. |
| 1:50.1 | The headline is that they are, you know, one of the most famous clubs in France, |
| 1:53.4 | and they are bottom of the league, which is a pretty difficult thing to achieve, really, |
| 1:59.9 | for a club of the size of Leon. You know, |
| 2:02.0 | you may be used to a team starting four or five games slowly. You know, if you think of |
| 2:07.4 | the best of Leon, then you think of a side that won the league seven times in a row at the turn |
... |
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