“Where is your dignity and respect?,” ask the Bad Gones, addressing Bradley Barcola and Castello Lukeba. In summary, the group of OL supporters criticizes the two players for having turned their backs on their training club in the midst of turmoil, “a few weeks after proclaiming love” for the Rhone club. “You are just paper Lyonnais that our memory will forget as quickly as possible, without forgiving your lack of respect. We wish you an obscure career polishing the sidelines,” they add, they who had the opportunity to directly scold the neo-Parisian Barcola on Sunday evening, during the correction inflicted by PSG on Lyon (1-4 ).
Which Barcola came out of silence this Tuesday on social networks. Transferred to Leipzig at the start of the transfer window, Lukeba explains himself in an interview with L’Equipe. Ensuring “understand” the disappointment of the supporters, the young (20 years old) defender assures that they “don’t know everything either”. In this case, Lukeba promises that his “first desire was to extend to Lyon”, explaining that he asked the club last October, without response. In fact, the Lyon leaders “had the ambition to sell (it) for several months, it dated from the start of last season, with the old management. It is reality”. Faced with this situation, the native of Lyon “decided to be more of an actor. I stopped working with my old agents. I was also made to understand that it could be good for the club if I was sold. I later learned that my sale was planned at the DNCG”, he says.
Initially, Olympique Lyonnais turned a deaf ear when Lukeba let it be known, through his agents, that he wanted to leave. So he confided directly in John Textor, who opened the door. “On the other hand, I never said that I had “given enough” for Lyon. I said that I had always “given everything”, it’s different, and I would have continued to do it if John Textor had told me that the door was closed. I had a contract, you don’t always do what you want in football, I wouldn’t have gone on strike, I would have fallen into line. But I thank him for understanding me and letting me go,” he explains. Under contract until 2028, Lukeba brought in €34 million for OL.
