AS HE STOOD solemn-faced and arms akimbo alongside his chastened team-mates and listened to a loudspeaker-wielding supporter harangue the Lyon squad on behalf of thousands of angry ultras after a 4-1 pumping by Paris Saint-Germain, Jake O’Brien would have been forgiven for thinking…what on earth have I let myself in for?
At that point O’Brien hadn’t even made his debut for the club he joined from Crystal Palace for €1 million in the summer.
Less than nine months later, as O’Brien and Lyon renew acquaintances with PSG in the French Cup final tonight, the question everyone else is asking is…how has this happened?
O’Brien is one of the most remarkable stories at Lyon this season, while Lyon are the most remarkable stories in Europe this season.
That September hammering to PSG was only Lyon’s fourth game of the season, with the ultras scolding the players, warning them not to further tarnish the club shirt. It didn’t spark an immediate turnaround in form, though, with Laurent Blanc soon fired and his replacement, Fabio Grosso, then booted after only one win in nine games.
At that point Lyon, seven-time champions and among the grandees of French football, were bottom of the league with only three points from 12 games and staring relegation in the face for the first time since 1951.
Amid the turmoil, the club took a punt on youth team coach Pierre Sage, whose only prior first-team experience to that point was as an assistant with third-tier Red Star FC. As it turns out, appointing Sage transcended the merely, er, wise. It was a miracle call.
Not only did Sage stave off relegation, he lifted the team to sixth, sealing Europa League qualification on the final day of the season. No side in France picked up more points after the turn of the year than Sage’s Lyon, making a bargain out of the €25,000 fine the club had to pay after game because Sage had not started his Uefa Pro Licence coaching course.
Securing Lige Un status and European football has been garnished by a run to tonight’s Cup final, the headline act of which is of course Kylian Mbappe in what will be his final game for PSG. (There are some murmurings that the famously stubborn PSG coach Luis Enrique is considering punishment-dropping Mbappe for the final, but pragmatism will surely win out.)
O’Brien, however, is aiming to become only the second Irishman to win the Coupe de France, after Bernard Williams won it with Sochaux back in 1937.
He is not the only Irishman to play at centre-back for Lyon, as Mick McCarthy had a brief and inglorious spell at the club in 1989. O’Brien, by contrast, has made a considerable impact in his first season. His transfer owes much to the sport’s modern dynamics. Lyon were under a kind of transfer probation in the summer, with French football’s financial watchdog raising alarm at the club’s finances and restricting their budget as a result. O’Brien – already within the purview of owner John Textor’s multi-club network at Crystal Palace and having previously been loaned to another of his clubs, Molenbeek of Belgium – was among the cut-price summer arrivals. The €1 million transfer fee and O’Brien’s EU and red-tape-free passport were further incentives on Lyon’s end.
While Blanc was sceptical and the player thought he may need to make another loan deal to force his way into the first-team picture, Grosso arrived and offered O’Brien an opportunity in a league game with Reims. He took it, and Sage kept faith with his Irish centre-back: from his debut against Reims, O’Brien missed just one league game across the rest of the season, and that was due to suspension.
While Alex Lacazette’s 19 goals has been crucial to salvaging Lyon’s season, O’Brien was their second-highest scorer in Ligue Un, with four goals.
Success has many different beholders but the industry’s baseline for a successful transfer is whether a player appears in more than half the first team’s minutes across their spell at the club. O’Brien is so far way clear of that bar: he has clocked 2,370 Ligue Un minutes this season, and another 360 minutes in the Coupe de France thus far.
O’Brien is also an example of what Irish football needs into the immediate future and beyond. Having benchmarked against the rest of Europe, the FAI said last month that we need at least 36 players averaging 1,350 minutes each across Europe’s top five leagues if we want to remain competitive in qualifying for major tournaments.
This season, only six Irish players hit that threshold, and only Dara O’Shea and Nathan Collins played more top-five minutes than O’Brien. (For the completionists out there: Josh Cullen, Chiedozie Ogbene, and Evan Ferguson complete that list.)
Plus, O’Brien is one of only two Irish internationals to have qualified for Europe next season from the top five leagues. (This achievement is the exclusive remit of Cork, as Caoimhín Kelleher is the other player to have done so.)
Though he is now 6′ 4″, O’Brien was a late physical developer: he only really hit his growth spurt from the age of 16 and didn’t play for Ireland until U21 level. One of the reasons he didn’t add the muscle he should have during his late teens is because he is Type 1 diabetic, and O’Brien now takes insulin and manages his blood sugar levels.
At 23, O’Brien is of the same generation as ‘Kenny’s Kids’, but while Adam Idah, Troy Parrott, Jason Knight, Nathan Collins, and Jasyon Molumby have all got at least 20 senior caps each – with Andrew Omobamidele and Aaron Connolly each one cap from double figures – but he has yet to make his senior debut, having earned his first squad call-up for the friendly games last March. The June friendlies against Hungary and Portugal should see that box ticked.
Lyon’s post-Christmas resuscitation did feature another 4-1 hammering to PSG, this time at the Parc des Princes. They are outsiders for tonight’s season crescendo but given their and O’Brien’s penchant for the near-miraculous, it would be foolish to write them off.
Lyon vs Paris Saint-Germain, KO 8pm; No live TV coverage in Ireland
