By Greg Vega 
Jean-Michel Alas did not hide it: “Olympic Lyonnais has Simin’s eyes for Corentin. The president of Lyon did not hide his emotion this Friday morning when he formalized in front of the press the arrival of Corentin Tolisso, one of the biggest hits of the OL training center, who played 160 games in the Lyon jersey from 2013 to 2017. “It’s a big day for me because Corentin is a great player, but a man of his word and a man of heart, he comes with ambition in his heart (sic),” slipped JMA.
Five years after his €47.5 million (including bonuses) move to Bayern Munich, the versatile midfielder returns to Lyon with plenty of titles in his bag: the World Cup, the League of Champions, five Bundesliga titles and two German Cups. What a change for you, though he has only made 21 starts in the league since rupturing the cruciate ligaments of his right knee in September 2018.
“Going to the World Cup is a personal goal”
“After five years at Bayern, he’s still strong, that’s for sure, assures Lyon recruitment manager Bruno Seiro. It’s very important that he brings a little German mentality in the intensity, the spirit of competition and the will to win. These are values we need to keep more and more. »
Eager to join Lyon in recovery, that is Saturday, and always focused on his “personal goal of going to the World Cup”, Corentin Tolisso returned to his dimensional change in Bavaria: “I grew, I matured, I saw a new system, a new culture, new attitudes. That’s it. OL has to bring in. We’ve seen the club fish at certain points at times like I was in 2017.
The production of supposedly easy matches is questionable
That means a season with Bruno Genesio that ended far from the podium in Ligue 1 (11 points from Nice, 3rd) and in the semi-finals of the Europa League against Peter Boss’s Ajax, despite the superior personnel, with eternal regret. “Coco” returns in more detail to what was behind this “German attitude” noted by Bruno Seiro. “In Lyon in 2016 or 2017, we were always against big teams, but we lost a lot of points against lower-ranked teams. Even last season, OL played big matches against Marseille or Paris. But it was difficult against smaller teams. This is what we have to change today. .” He follows:
At Bayern Munich, it was this mentality that struck me the most when I arrived: whether we were playing against Dortmund or 18, the motivation was the same, the preparation was the same, and in the end, the result was often the same. We need to step up in this preparation for what are supposed to be easy matches. »
“It’s more of a psychological and mental problem than a physical one”
With an unknown: Despite his injuries last season at Bayern, will the 28-cap France man be on the field more often with his partner Alexandre Lacazette to make this change at his training club?
“The medical visit is over, that’s a good thing, the person concerned is smiling. It is true that I had many problems. But I think it’s more of a psychological and mental problem than a physical one, for reasons I’m not going to explain today. So many things played in my head that lead to so many injuries. But I have done a lot of physical preparation and there will be no problem with my fitness. » And JMA said Correntin Tolisso was “a man of his word”.