It may well have been lost amidst the drama and bedlam of Lyon’s remarkable late triumph over Manchester City on Saturday, but the truest finish on the night came from the boot of a nominal defender.
Moussa Dembele stole the headlines, coming off the bench to score twice and render Kevin De Bruyne’s well-taken equalizer irrelevant. However, it was Ivory Coast international Maxwel Cornet’s brilliantly executed opener that set the cat among the pigeons, that first signposted the impending doom for Pep Guardiola.
In fairness, to refer to him as a defender is slightly disingenuous. It was only in mid-December 2019 that the 23-year-old was pressed into service as a left-back by Rudi Garcia. The circumstances were extenuating – there was an injury crisis in that position – but it seemed a particularly desperate call.
It is easy enough to countenance a certain profile of chalk-on-the-boots winger morphing into a full-back, but Cornet was very much a forward. He favoured starting on the right and cutting infield to shoot with his dominant left foot, a move-set with which he had opened the scoring the last time Lyon and Manchester City had met in the competition.
In fact, if there were any question marks over him, they concerned his lack of defensive rigour.
Quite what put that particular bee in Garcia’s bonnet is difficult to tell.
Perhaps it simply sufficed that he is left-footed; whatever the motivation, Cornet – who to that point had only started six games in the league – recognized an opportunity to be important, and jumped at it. He looked to the defenders, notably Jason Denayer, for positional cues, and took to watching videos of Jordi Alba to gain an understanding of the role.
He has certainly had quite the baptism. The coronavirus outbreak brought a halt to football but, unlike the other major European leagues, Ligue 1 elected to end the season early. Garcia had moved to a 3-5-2, with Cornet as a left wing-back, not long before the lockdown, but by the time the Champions League resumed, Cornet had only started nine games in a completely new role.
That his first two assignments post-resumption would be against Juventus and Manchester City is remarkable enough. That he was a part of the defensive obduracy that has come to define Lyon in this run is even more so. Against the Italians, he nullified Federico Bernardeschi brilliantly and, despite suffering a blow to the thigh, saw out the game.
He then passed a late fitness test to star against Guardiola’s side, and blew past a static Kyle Walker to latch onto Eric Garcia’s sliding clearance and bend the ball past a stranded Ederson from quite a way out.
Perhaps the greatest marker of his adaptation, however, came on the defensive side of the ball: his superb sliding tackle at the back post thwarted Raheem Sterling in the first half, and in the second he shut down a wily Riyad Mahrez.
It was the performance of a natural, inexplicable in its aptitude: “I enjoy playing against the best in the world,” he said to RMC Sport afterward.
The evidence would certainly seem to support that: as the challenge has stiffened, so has his resolve calcified. Knowing that, it is fair to expect a titanic battle when Lyon line up against Bayern Munich on Wednesday.
The Germans will present an altogether more perilous examination for the credentials of Garcia’s side, having swatted aside Barcelona – and indeed all others who have stood in their path in 2020. However, whereas the Catalans where overrun in the face of a swarm, unable due to age and dysfunction of mounting any kind of resistance, Lyon are brimming with brio and youthful energy.
Whether that will be enough is a different matter entirely. Certainly Cornet will need to be on at his absolute best defensively if he is to emerge on top against Serge Gnabry, but going forward he will also draw some encouragement from the opening 15 minutes of both halves in Bayern’s 8-2 thrashing of Barcelona. The pace of Jordi Alba on the overlap caused the Bavarians some problems: it was his cross that David Alaba sliced into his own net, and another cut-back teed up Luis Suarez for another 12 minutes after the break.
One thing’s for sure, it will be a “complicated game” in which Lyon will need to balance their desire with discipline, picking their moments just as they did against Manchester City. In that sense, and especially within the context of the French side’s system, Cornet is key to the possibility of yet another upset.