The Olympique Lyonnais Reserves & Academy are the reserve team and academy of French club Olympique Lyonnais. The reserves squad play in the Championnat National 3, the fifth division of French football and the second highest division the team is allowed to participate in. Lyon have won the reserves title of the Championnat de France Amateur six times. They have won in 1998, 2001, 2003, 2006, and 2009, and 2010.
Overview
The U-19 squad participates in their weekly league, the Championnat National U19, which is a league comprising four groups of fourteen clubs who play each other twice during the regular season. This session is dubbed Phase 1. Following the regular season, the four group winners are randomly selected to face each other in semi-final matches (dubbed Phase 2) to decide who will play each other in the Under-18 Championnat National championship match, usually held in Mayenne. There is also a third-place match, which is usually held just before the championship match. The Under-18 squad also regularly participates in the Coupe Gambardella. They have won the title on 4 occasions. They won the cup in 1971, 1994, 1997 and 2022.
The U-17 side participates in a league, the Championnat National U17, a youth league comprising six groups of twelve clubs who play each other twice during the regular season, dubbed Phase 1. Following the regular season, the six group winners and the two best second place clubs are randomly inserting into two groups of four, where they play each other at neutral venues once over a span of four days. This portion is dubbed Phase 2. The two winners of each group will then face each other in the championship match to determine the champion of the Under-17 Championnat National. The Under-17 squad also participates in regional cup competitions.
The current National 3 manager is Gueida Fofana, who played for Olympique Lyonnais before but had his career cut-short due to injuries. He has been the manager of Lyon's reserves team since 2019. The manager of the Olympique Lyonnais U-19s and U-17s are former Lyon defenderJérémie Bréchet, and Mohamed Chacha.[2]
Philosophy
According to Faouzi Djedou-Benabid, the scout for Niort and the co-author of Pourquoi le foot français va dans le mur (Why French football goes into wall) (2015), published by Hugo Sport, the training provided in Olympique Lyonnais academy favors the technical learning of football over match results, like FC Barcelona: thus, "Lyon educators do not hesitate to have defenders play in midfield so that 'they can learn to use their feet better". In addition, the formation does not favor any pattern of play, allowing the players to adapt easily to all positions during the game.[3]
as a result of this philosophy, since the 2010s, Lyon youth academy gained reputation all around Europe as being one of the top football academies in the continent, producing several players playing in European top tier competitions.[4] Between 2012 and 2019, Lyon appears successively eight times in top 4 of the International Centre for Sports Studies list of the best football academies in Europe. Lyon was also rated by the French Football Federation as the best football academy in France for six seasons in a row, between 2013 and 2019.[5]
In February 2014, L'Équipe writes that Olympique Lyonnais ranks second in terms of the number of players trained at the club and playing in the "five major European championships" (Germany, England, Spain, France and Italy) tied with Real Madrid, and the first being FC Barcelona.[6][7] In 2015, France Football rated Lyon youth academy as one of the best in Europe, as it is used to feed the first team, and also having a pool of players with value on the transfer market, without this being in the heart of the club's policy.[8] Indeed, the competition level in Lyon's youth team is very difficult for young players, they will regularly, voluntarily or not, emancipate themselves in other very young clubs. Just as regularly, a certain number of them manage to have a good national or international career such as Ludovic Giuly, Karim Benzema, Alexandre Lacazette, Samuel Umtiti, or Nabil Fekir.
Many players from Lyon's youth system have managed to reach the professional level in football, whether at Lyon or at other clubs. As of October 2023, 34 players formed in the Lyon academy had capped for the France national football team.[10] Below is a non-exhaustive list of notable players who trained in the youth or reserve teams of Olympique Lyonnais:
Karim Benzema played for Lyon from 1997 to 2005. He is one of the most successful graduates of the Lyon youth academy and the only person so far from the academy to win the Ballon d'Or.
Sidney Govou joined Lyon youth academy in 1996 at the age of 17. He was promoted to the first team in 2000 and won the 2001 Young Player of the Year Award in his first season in Ligue 1. He is the only academy graduate to have taken part in all of the club's 7 successive league titles.
John Textor
Gueida Fofana (National 3)
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