“You had to win a derby to be adopted from Lyon”

The coach of Olympique Lyonnais, Pierre Sagepresented himself just after Olivier Dall'Oglio in the press conference room to discuss his team's victory in the derby against AS Saint-Étienne (1-0).

Pierre Sage: “I was told that you had to win a derby to be adopted from Lyon, I'm happy to finally be one after all these years spent here. I'm happy with the result but not satisfied with the second half. I think there is a psychological and emotional factor that played a role. In the second half, we also had a tactical problem which we resolved by switching to 4-2-3-1. However, we still went back, we left opportunities to our opponent like the last equalizers that we conceded in the last matches.

Was I surprised by ASSE? No, because they were also playing a derby. From the moment we help them, they have situations that we have managed to annihilate thanks in particular to Lucas (Perri). Concerning Alexandre's (Lacazette) goal, I don't find it surprising. We are very happy for him, he scored two goals in three days and clearly proves that he is still in good shape and that he is an excellent player.

In fact, as much as we moved well behind our opponent's back in the first half, we had at least three very clear chances before the goal. In the second half, it was harder, we had a tactical defensive problem, we took time to resolve it, with the changes it was resolved. We had a lot of possession but when we played deep, we had less impact than in the first half. I think today the emotional aspect played a role. Today we care about playing better in two halves, improving the half which is not good, when we improve that we will take points and our ranking will be better than this one.”

Pierre Sage spoke of the importance of his players trained at the club in the approach to this derby: “It is certain that a derby has a cultural side and these players relay this history. We based the preparation for this match on two angles: one tactical and the other on the culture of the derby, in particular with the supporters yesterday, and also today. We showed them the importance of a derby for a club, a city, I'm happy to have won it at least for that. (…) Once again strategies are always evaluated ex post. Today, the fact of having preserved the players by preventing them from taking a third yellow against Auxerre, we are happy to have done it. We had more solutions to solve the problems.“

The Lyon coach also returned to the goal refused to Nuamah after intervention by the VAR: “Once again I am not criticizing VAR, because for me it puts the truth on the table even if there is a human interpretation behind it. It's not demagoguery to say that when we've won, it's just that I'm in tune with this tool.“