“If (the president) says I’m staying, then I’m staying.” Alexandre Lacazette smiled that famous smile with the assurance of a seasoned pro as Canal+ grilled him on his Olympique Lyonnais future, following Sunday’s Ligue 1 opener at Nancy. He’s been here before, and has mastered walking the fine line between coy and candid.
Lacazette could afford to be relaxed about the speculation, of course, following his hurricane of a start to the season. If it’s increasingly clear that he’d accept a move to the right destination - a true step up from his current home, probably meaning a Champions League regular in a more prestigious league - he’s highly unlikely to force a move, as a local boy who is already at well-paid and important at an increasingly successful and ambitious club.
“I feel very good at OL,” he told Canal, “and you’ve seen the proof today in my morale. I scored three goals, and everything’s going well with my teammates.” In a stanza of some circumspection, this was perhaps the biggest understatement of all. After a tough opening half-hour against the Ligue 2 champions, full of brio on the top-flight’s one remaining artificial pitch, Lacazette took up where he left off last season.
His hat-trick on the penultimate day of the 2015/16 season against Monaco guaranteed Champions League group stage football for the second successive season, and meant he totalled 16 goals in the calendar year of 2016. This latest feat lifted him further up the ladder of Lyon legend, taking him on to 75 Ligue 1 goals, joint-fourth on the club’s all-time scoring list in the competition with Juninho, and behind only Fleury Di Nallo, Bernard Lacombe and Serge Chiesa.
Lacazette simply pulverised Pablo Correa’s side and though he has kept his counsel about his omission from France’s Euro 2016 squad, distance from it is making Didier Deschamps’ decision to leave him out look ever more perplexing, especially after a tournament in which not one of Les Bleus’ strikers scored as a substitute. Now that Zlatan Ibrahimovic has left France, there is simply no question over who is Ligue 1’s best centre-forward.
Nancy can attest to that. Lacazette’s aim was unerring at the Stade Marcel-Picot. He had fibr efforts at goal, four of which were on target - before he opened the scoring, Lacazette drew a fine save from Guy N’Dy Assembe with a curling direct free-kick. Those accounted for more than half of Lyon’s nine efforts during the match, seven of which worked N’Dy Assembe.
What was also evident was that relationship with his teammates that Lacazette was keen to underline. The majority of those are fellow Tola Vologe academy graduates, and it shows in the team’s general play, based on fluid movement, and one and two-touch circulation of the ball. As well as his efforts on goal, Lacazette takes a full part in the side’s overall game, and provided two key passes, one of which provided Maxwel Cornet with the chance that could have finished the game before half-time, with OL already 2-0 up, before N’Dy Assembe bailed Nancy out.
All this goes some way to explaining why Lyon have - at least officially - all but closed the door on the possibility of Lacazette leaving in this window. For his complicity with his team as much as for his quality, he is quite simply irreplaceable at this point. The fact that the oft-mooted, and most suitable potential replacement, Wissam Ben Yedder, has recently joined Sevilla from Toulouse, makes this even more the case. The coach, Bruno Genesio, was quite unequivocal after the game. “He’s at Lyon, and he’s going to stay,” said Genesio. “For me, there’s nothing to discuss.”
If Lacazette should indeed stay, Lyon have the right to aim high this season, even if last week’s Trophée des Champions humbling by Paris Saint-Germain was a reality check of sorts. Yet their difficulties against the champions, as well as the sticky opening here, show that there’s work to do.
Even if Genesio’s reintroduction of a 4-3-3 formation following his appointment was instrumental in overhauling Monaco in the home strait of last season, one wonders how long Lyon can stick with it. The first counter-argument to it is the team’s overall defensive shape. Cornet and the returning Nabil Fekir make up a narrow front three with Lacazette, as we can see from the player average position chart, with their inclination to a game of rapid interchanges necessitating them being in close proximity to the main man.
With Cornet and Fekir not too disposed to major defensive efforts and Lyon’s midfield three of Maxime Gonalons, Sergi Darder and Corentin Tolisso also fairly narrow, there is little to no protection for the full-backs, in this case Rafael and Jérémy Morel. This was a palatable risk when Lyon were chasing Monaco with nothing to lose, but the credo needs to change now. The lack of defensive cover on the flanks was the major problem in that hiding by PSG in Klagenfurt a little over a week ago.
The second aspect of the tactic is that it doesn’t get the best out of the Fekir/Lacazette partnership. They were the key in getting Lyon back into the Champions League - as well as chasing PSG at the top until a few games from the end - in the 2014/15 campaign. One of the greatest legacies of Hubert Fournier, Genesio’s predecessor, was surely combining the pair in an unorthodox but effective 4-4-2. The logic was simple, with Lacazette and Fekir working well the closer together they were. Fekir scored 13 and assisted nine more in that season, and started last season in fine form before sustaining a knee injury. On Sunday, Cornet was typically closer to Lacazette, which isn’t ideal.
Before thinking too hard about that, Genesio will just be pleased to get through to September 1 with Lacazette still on the staff. If he manages it, his team will be one to watch this season.
Can Alexandre Lacazette fire Lyon to the Ligue 1 title this season? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below
