“There is no friendship on the pitch,” says the Lyon forward Eugénie Le Sommer. Paris Saint-Germain’s full-back Sakina Karchaoui echoes those sentiments: “Before the match and after the match, yes, but during the match? No friends. We cut contact the days before the match, but once the match is over, we love to tease each other depending on the result.”
For PSG there has been scant opportunity to brag. They have barely dented Lyon’s Division 1 Feminine run of 16 titles, 2021 being the outlier when PSG finished top for the first time. In the Champions League PSG have twice been runners-up, to Frankfurt and Lyon, while Lyon have won the tournament a record eight times.
