Olympique Lyonnais: The Champions League trailblazers

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 April 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Olympique Lyonnais is the most successful club in women’s football, dominating Europe over the last 15 years winning eight Champions League titles. Only Barcelona have recently been able to compete. Lyon's success is the vision of club president Jean-Michel Aulas who wanted to create an iconic team, with the best players, but in the case of Aulas he also promised to ensure both male and female players were treated equally. This included the first mixed football training academy.

In Olympique Lyonnais: The Champions League trailblazers we find out the story of how the French club raised the standard of women’s football, going behind the scenes with striker and Ballon d’Or winner Ada Hegerberg, Chelsea and England defender Lucy Bronze and France and Lyon captain Wendie Renard who have all witnessed huge success and then change with Europe’s elite catching up. Now South Korean born businesswoman Michele Kang has taken over the the French giants, with big ambitions for the club.

Photo: Players of Olympique Lyonnais celebrate after winning during the UEFA Women's Champions League final match between FC Barcelona and Olympique Lyonnais at Juventus Stadium on May 21, 2022 in Turin, Italy. (Credit: Ciancaphoto Studio/Getty Images)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The Lion
0:07.0	on the stretch to Brits with the effort
0:10.0	and it's into the back of the net
0:12.0	and Leon may have broken Chelsea hearts late on
0:16.0	the European champions
0:18.0	so often seem to find a way. And having scored...
0:21.6	The lion means will and tenacity. Of course, we are the city of Lyon. We are the club of Lyon.
0:29.6	Will and tenacity.
0:32.6	Welcome to Leon, home to the most successful club in women's football, Olympic Leone, a star-studded team that was a step ahead of the rest in Europe.
0:44.8	From 2016, they were dominant. They went where no club had gone before, winning an unprecedented five European Champions League titles in a row, a record only matched
0:56.7	by the Great Real Madrid men's team of the 1950s. So what does it take to win the Champions
1:04.0	League? Belief? Like we felt untouchable in that period and it took a lot of, a lot of things.
1:11.1	It wasn't easy at all, but we were just brutal.
1:14.4	Like, we were going into every game thinking we're going to win this.
1:18.5	A visionary owner?
1:20.2	I mean, this guy was ahead of his time for sure in women's football.
1:23.3	You know, you look now and people say about investing in sport.
1:26.4	He was the first one to do it.
1:28.2	Talent and a winning mentality.
1:30.7	This is Olympic lunnae. You don't lose.
1:33.1	And you are angry and you are just unsatisfied in every way if we fall short of that.
1:40.6	The team was, yeah, it was that Galactago team when I first joined.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 25 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.