Michele Kang is looking to improve Olympique Lyon’s facilities as its new owner.
On Thursday, the team posted a video with their new president, in which Kang called the team’s current training center “inadequate,” and noted that they are looking at space for a new and better training facility.
“It is very, very – relatively speaking – very small,” she said. “It doesn’t have enough space to take care of our players. Quite frankly, I don’t even know whether we have enough space to have all of these 27, 28 [person] staff to work adequately with our players.”
The current campus, she says, doesn’t have enough room left to expand the facilities, although Kang says she wishes they could.
Looking further, Kang also wants to see the team have access to a larger stadium, calling the team’s current regular season home at the training center “not acceptable.” The team does play some games at Groupama Stadium, home to the Olympique Lyonnais men’s team.
“I wish we could play every game in this beautiful Groupama stadium,” she said. “But as ambitious as I am and this group are, I think filling a 60,000 person stadium for every game is probably a stretch. There’s also an availability issue.”
The team will still “absolutely” play big games, like this Sunday’s matchup against rival Paris Saint-Germain, in the larger stadium with hopes to one day sell it out. But ultimately, she’s eyeing a smaller stadium that seats around 15,000 to 20,000 for the rest of the team’s regular season games.
“They deserve a better stadium,” she said. “Our fans deserve a better stadium.”
She doesn’t currently have plans to change the name or the crest, noting that they “share the legacy” as part of the OL family. Although, there will still be “subtle” changes so that people can distinguish the women’s team from the men’s team.
