Olympique Lyon’s Academy Graduates At The Heart Of Laurent Blanc’s Squad And Potential Candidates Who Could Step Up Next Season – Scout Report

The Olympique Lyonnais academy system is famed for having produced some of the best players to grace a football pitch. Throughout his tenure as owner, Jean-Michel Aulas has emphasised the importance of a ‘Lyon DNA’ with a focus on creating a pathway to the first team for talented young players. With Aulas recently announcing his retirement, it will be interesting to see if Lyon continues their focus on youth development under the new hierarchy.

A few well-known names who have graduated from the Lyon academy system include Karim Benzema, who, of course, has gone on to experience considerable success at Real Madrid, and Nabil Fekir, who made over 140 appearances for his hometown club before moving on to pastures new. Alexandre Lacazette and Corentin Tolisso have both recently returned to the club for a second stint, they came through the Lyon academy and played significant roles in the first team before moving on to Arsenal and Bayern Munich respectively. 

This tactical analysis will take the form of a scout report where we take a closer look at the Lyon Academy pathway. We will perform an analysis of some of the more recent academy graduates and how they are utilised in Laurent Blanc’s tactics. We will also look at some players who have been loaned out to gain experience this season and assess whether they are ready to step up. Finally, we will examine the next generation of talent emerging from the academy and highlight some potential gems to watch in the future.

Established academy graduates

Rayan Cherki

The first player we will examine for this analysis is Rayan Cherki. The 19-year-old is widely considered to be one of the best-ever prospects to come through the academy system at Lyon. He made his debut for Les Gones in 2019 and has been something of a regular ever since.

This season, Cherki has been deployed in a multitude of positions as Lyon seeks to build on the successes of previous campaigns. We’ve seen him deployed as a winger on either side, as a number ‘10’ and occasionally as a forward in a front two alongside Alexandre Lacazette. He has contributed three goals and four assists to the Lyon cause so far this campaign.

The pizza chart above allows us to compare Cherki to his fellow Ligue 1 players this season. We can immediately see that his attacking contributions far outweigh his defensive ones. Furthermore, we can also see that his goal contributions per 90 are significantly lower than his expected contributions. Cherki appears to be incredibly progressive with his passing, although not always accurate.