Paris-Lyon 2009: Olympique Lyonnais

We couldn't spend two months in Europe without going to a football match, right? Of course not! As luck would have it, we finally remembered to check out the website of the local team, the Olympique Lyonnais (League 1 champions for seven straight years until falling to third place this year), just a few days before their final home match of the season. On Friday, while I was getting my daily Monoprix fix, Aaron made a solo journey down to the stadium to buy us tickets for Saturday; to our delighted surprise, they were not yet sold out.

The game was a lot of fun! As we approached the stadium 15 minutes or so before the match started, it was already reverberating with the cheers of 40,000 spectators, and the singing and chanting did not abate much over the course of the next two hours. You can get a taste of the atmosphere in the stadium from the video clip below.

He shoots.... He scores! AND THE CROWD GOES WILD!

Now, if you were watching closely, you may have noticed a smallish fire burning in the stands at the opposite end of the field. (And if you weren't watching that closely, watch again and keep an eye out for a red fireball!) That was a flare lit by someone in what appeared to be the official hard-core cheering section -- you know, the one reserved for people who come equipped not only with flags and banners to wave, but also with drums, megaphones, blowhorns ... and pyrotechnic devices. Near the end of the match, the green-vested security people posted in front of that section roughly tripled, and shortly thereafter were joined by black-clad figures bearing shields -- I can only describe them as riot police. Happily/Sadly, nobody tried to rush the field, so we did not have an opportunity to observe that aspect of European football culture firsthand.

We spent much of the match trying to figure out what in heck the people around us were cheering, particularly the words to one oft-repeated chant that we were pretty sure was about Juninho, a Brazilian player we had never heard of before but whose name was on the back of the souvenir jerseys of numerous fans within spitting distance of our seats. The chant was pretty simple: first, "JU - NI - NHO! na na na na na," followed by "BLA - BLA - BLA - BLA - BLA! na na na na na." (Note: The chant in the video clip above is also about Juninho, but it's a different chant.) Try as I might, even after I resorted to attempting to read the lips of anyone sitting near us who was chanting, I couldn't come up with any guess at all as to what the "BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA" portion of the chant might be saying. Luckily, the Internet being the source of all knowledge these days, a quick visit to the OL Passion website after the game delivered the answer to my question, as well as the words (plus MP3 files) for any other OL fan song or chant I may wish to learn. I feel much better now that I know that the rest of the chant consisted only of Juninho's five-syllable last name (Pernambucano), and not anything in French that I may have had a fighting chance of deciphering. I'll make sure to brush up on the other chants before the match, should we ever go again!

Besides the small fires repeatedly lit by the posse of loyal OL fans at the opposite end of the stadium from us, there was also an official, full-blown fireworks show after the match. It was pretty impressive, I must admit (even though I don't like fireworks). The fireworks photo below was taken early on in the show, when it was just getting going.

Giving the fields one last sprinkle before the match