Will we one day see Anthony Lopes in the Olympique Lyonnais jersey again? With 489 matches in all competitions in the colors of Les Gones, the goalkeeper trained at the club is the fifth most capped player in OL history. But since the start of the season, he has not played a single minute, the Brazilian Lucas Perri having passed him in the hierarchy. Worse still, since his explosive statements in the daily newspaper the Teamthe Portuguese international is simply no longer called up by his coach Pierre Sage, his last appearance in the group dating back to August 24 and the home defeat against AS Monaco: “I simply think that I am not part of the hierarchy of goalkeepers at OL. I am in the place I was given, which is to say none. I accept the situation as best I can, knowing that I have no other choice available to me. (…) Nobody warned me that my place was in question. I was clearly not told anything in January“, he explained.
“He went from being an icon of the club, a full-fledged starter, to nothing.”
Everything now suggests that the 34-year-old goalkeeper is going to leave his long-time club through the back door, which is bound to raise questions among fans, but also among former players. In an interview given to Butit was Grégory Coupet, legendary OL goalkeeper, who looked into his situation by expressing his incomprehension: “That too will have to be explained to me. Antho's situation completely escapes me, I don't understand. What I see is that he has gone from being an icon of the club, a full-fledged starter, to nothing. Anthony was swept aside in one go, with total indifference and without anyone stepping up to the plate. It's just mind-boggling. No need to draw a picture of the evolution of the world of football“, explains the man who has 519 matches with OL.
And if he wants to make it clear that he has nothing against Lucas Perri, he adds that he would have liked to see real competition set up: “Be careful, and it must be clear, I have nothing against Perri. But who spoke to Antho at the start of the season, eye to eye, to tell him that there wouldn't even be any competition on a sporting level? Person. I mean no one. However, he was ready to fight sportingly, no problem. He would have tried by all means to regain his number 1 place. But that's not at all what happened“. The message has the merit of being clear, the coming weeks, and in particular the approach of the winter transfer window, could mark a turning point in the career of Anthony Lopes in the Rhône.
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To summarize
Grégory Coupet, the former goalkeeper of Olympique Lyonnais, looked into the situation of Anthony Lopes, excluded from the professional group for several weeks following his explosive statements in the newspaper l'Équipe.
