Champions League Live: Bayern Munich vs. Lyon

Not only would the cancellation cost French clubs revenue, time and players, Aulas said, not only would it deprive his team of the chance to improve on its standing — it sat seventh in the league table when the season was stopped, meaning it faced the prospect of a first season outside European competition in more than a decade — but it would hamstring the attempts of the two French representatives of the Champions League.

Aulas’s theory was simple, and it was widely held: Lyon and Paris St.-Germain, the two French teams still alive in the knockout rounds, would return to the Champions League cold, weakened with ring rust, against opponents in the full flush of the season. “In August, we are going to meet teams in these competitions who have been able to prepare better than us,” he had said in the spring.

On Tuesday night, P.S.G. became the first French team to reach a Champions League final since Monaco in 2004. On Wednesday, Lyon can join its great rival, though there is the rather intimidating bulwark of Bayern Munich — fresh off an 8-2 victory against Barcelona — standing in the way. Never a man to let facts get in the way of his opinion, Aulas suggested, after P.S.G. rallied to eliminate Atalanta and Lyon shocked Manchester City in the quarterfinals, that a “little bit of luck” had erased the competitive disadvantage the French teams had been handed.

Lyon will need that to hold this evening. Bayern has looked imperious since European soccer’s restart — since Hansi Flick took charge in November, in fact — culminating in that coldblooded demolition of Barcelona. The general rule of European soccer is that the team with the greater resources and the better players will win, and in that sense this is as big a mismatch as P.S.G.’s victory against RB Leipzig on Tuesday.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/19/sports/soccer/bayern-munich-lyon-live-score.html