My Saturday evening was spent in my sisters room listening to live Internet commentary of the Coupe de la ligue final. To be frank it was light relief after spending the afternoon watching the worst game in the history of football. Oxford's 0-0 draw with Burton was just about the most uninspiring performance I've ever seen in my life, two sides who clearly had no interest in breaking into a sweat and strolling around like it was a pre-season friendly, I could go on... but I won't. The cup final was also a pretty pedestrian affair and with 5 minutes to go seemed certain to go into extra time at 0-0. Unlike Jerome and Co the French commentators do a great job making it at least sound interesting and even though my understanding is limited to names and words like 'corner' it was easy to get really into the whole occasion. The noise was fantastic as you'd expect from the continent, in fact as the players came out of the tunnel I thought the Stadium was going to blow up. Unfortunately for the neutrals (of which there are not many when OL are concerned) the game was not the classic it promised. 
The media had over-hyped the game as a clash of the two best teams in the country and everyone was hoping for one of those 'feasts of football' that are so often promised. What everyone forgot is that Les Girondins have not built their success on free flowing attacking football but instead on stifling opponents, ruining matches and scoring one goal. This tactic was employed so cynically by Ricardo on Saturday that rather than spend time doing a detailed write up I'll just repeat the sentence: Bordeaux stifled Lyon, ruined the match and scored one goal with their only shot on target. As a football purist (sort of) I can't help agreeing with Gerard Houllier when he says Lyon were robbed and that Bordeaux didn't deserve the win because they were and they didn't but the Oxford fan in me, having been starved of any success ever, say's sod it. At the end of the day the club that walks away with the trophy deserves it simple because they won the match. You can argue about 'un-sporting' tactics forever but on Monday the coupe de la Ligue was paraded around Bordeaux - not Lyon and Houllier should closer to home for the reasons why. Ricardo explained the tactics by saying that there is a reason why Lyon are 21 points ahead of them - which roughly translates as "had we tried to play football they would have battered us" and you can't really argue, Lyon could and should have won this at a canter. 
The banner dominating the middle tier of the Bordeaux end carried the slogan "Girondins tonight you are not 11 but 30,000" and they meant it. The noise from the Bordeaux end was constant and got me thinking about the play-off final should Oxford get there. Will the hordes of U's fans and hangers on actually get behind the team and make it a real spectacle? Will they complain if we bring flags and streamers? Will they insist on sitting down? Something about Oxford at Wembley frightens me and I really hope our big day out isn't spoiled by the huge number of very very boring fans we attract.
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