Chapter 5: We debut as One.
It was the day of our league debut, my official debut in ligue 1 as a manager and no longer a player... How the time flies. Now I understand the times I would get benched, I could understand a players disappointment better - I was looking also to take every tip my past managers passed onto me and mold them into my way of coaching, hopefully for the better of the team. Although I can't forget the incident from yesterday, for safety reasons I had to tell my wife and kids to fly out of Lyon for a few days, just to be safe... We were not going to let anyone take this away from us, even if we had to go against the grain, our pride in this club shall come first and foremost.
The match begun and the boys looked roaring to go, and it showed very early into the game as
Flamboyant midfielder Zè Rafael got Olympique Lyonnais off to a flyer by scoring a thumping effort from range in the 3rd minute. From there we went on to dominate the game, although we wasted alot of chances, in the end we were lucky enough because the last goal of the game was an own goal from Sylvester Igboun; an incident which will undoubtedly have caused him some embarrassment, although it gave us the win - and the first 3 points in the league!
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Although we stood equal ground for the most part, experienced midfielder Etienne Didot gave Toulouse FC the lead with an accurate finish at their home ground from inside the penalty area in the 19th minute and this seemed like a mountain to climb for us. Tenacious midfielder Papa Alioune Ndiaye completed the scoring for Toulouse with a placed shot from close range on the 39th and closed the first half on the 2-0 score for them. Second half was a complete step back from what I had seen in the previous days, we still had alot to work on but this did not discourage me in the least - it only motivated us to do better.
After the first two fixtures in the league it saw Olympique Lyon standing in 8th position with a win, and a loss. Not a bad start, it could have gone worse - and it is early days yet in the league therefore the squad is mostly optimistic at this point, the realistic achievement for us would be landing in Europa League. And speaking of Europa League we still had another Qualifying match - the last one against Elfsborg home & away, with a game against Lens inbetween coming up. But I'd never set the bar that low for the team, for as far we know we're still in it for a cheeky title run, because if you aim for the Moon, even if you fail you still land upon the stars.
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