Agency :
Women’s football is a bet that’s paying off for French club Lyon and their president Jean-Michel Aulas.
Lyon’s women’s team can win a fourth consecutive Champions League title when they face Barcelona in the final in Budapest on Saturday. As many as eight members of that team will be in the France squad in June and July when the country hosts the women’s World Cup.
If they reach the late stages those players will be even more at home because the semi-finals and final will be played at Lyon’s Groupama Stadium.
“We are in a virtuous circle with an audience that will come and watch,” Aulas told AFP.
Aulas, an outspoken figure in French football for decades, said French women’s football had benefitted from investment at first Montpellier and later Paris Saint-Germain, Bordeaux and Lyon, where his club took over a struggling women’s team in the city in 2004.
Women’s football is a bet that’s paying off for French club Lyon and their president Jean-Michel Aulas.
Lyon’s women’s team can win a fourth consecutive Champions League title when they face Barcelona in the final in Budapest on Saturday. As many as eight members of that team will be in the France squad in June and July when the country hosts the women’s World Cup.
If they reach the late stages those players will be even more at home because the semi-finals and final will be played at Lyon’s Groupama Stadium.
“We are in a virtuous circle with an audience that will come and watch,” Aulas told AFP.
Aulas, an outspoken figure in French football for decades, said French women’s football had benefitted from investment at first Montpellier and later Paris Saint-Germain, Bordeaux and Lyon, where his club took over a struggling women’s team in the city in 2004.
“At a European level, we have probably provoked the desire in all the big clubs to be able to do the same thing, either by buying a club or by building a women’s section integrated with the club.
