World Football Club Crests

Olympique Lyonnais was founded in 1950 when a splinter group left Lyon Olympique Universitaire, the sports club of which the city’s rugby team is a part of today. The newly formed football club, which adopted the rampant lion from the Lyon city crest, started out in the second division and success was a long time coming. The club did win the French Cup three times between 1964 and 1973, but it wasn’t until the end of the ’80s that they achieved serious success.

In 1987 the businessman Jean-Michel Aulas bought the club, which was then in the second division, with a view to taking it into Europe. He was as good as his word and two years later Lyon were playing in the UEFA Cup. Aulas invested huge sums in OL, but it was thanks to their own talents that the club came to dominate French football. Between 2002 and 2008, Lyon set a new French record by winning seven consecutive League titles, a feat achieved with the help of homegrown players Karim Benzema and Sidney Govou alongside inexpensive finds like Juninho Pernambucano and Michael Essien. Along with the burgeoning success, the club began to abandon their philosophy of nurturing talent and instead began to buy players for vast sums – a fatal decision that led to the club’s fall from the pinnacle of French football.

Today Lyon is again recruiting domestic talent, and is well rewarded for it. The club have certainly found it hard to shift PSG, but with the help of their own gifted players they have managed to establish themselves once more as one of France’s top teams. In 2014 the number of players nurtured by Lyon who were then playing in the five top European Leagues was surpassed only by Barcelona – testament to the fact that their philosophy works.

CLUB: Olympique Lyonnais

NICKNAMES: OL, Les Gones (the Children) and Les Rhodaniens (People of the Rhône)

FOUNDED: 1950

STADIUM: Parc Olympique Lyonnais, Lyon (59,186 capacity)

HISTORIC PLAYERS: Serge Chiesa, Grégory Coupet, Karim Benzema, Juninho Pernambucano, Samuel Umtiti and Alexandre Lacazette

1950–1972. The club’s first emblem borrowed the lion and colours from the Lyon city crest, both of these having great importance for the city. The lion has its origin in the 14th century, and in the crest it represents the city of Lyon itself. The club crest was created in the year that OL was founded and was barely modified over the subsequent 20 years.

1972–1989. During the ’70s, Lyon’s mythical lion appeared in various versions, and here we see two of them. The lion, the football and the club’s initials appeared in every emblem.

1989–1996. Two years after his purchase of the club, Jean-Michel Aulas changed the Olympique Lyonnais emblem. The initials appeared in what was, for the time, a modern font and they were covered by the colours blue and red in the shape of a V, a pattern that the club had used on its match shirts.

1996–2006. In the mid-’90s the lion made a welcome return although in a new colour. The football was now gone, but the name of the club was spelled out for the first time. This emblem was to signal Lyon’s nascent dominance in French football.

2006–present. After a decade the emblem was modernised: the colours were given a new tone while ‘Olympique Lyonnais’ was widened at the top of the shield.

Karim Benzema playing for Olympique Lyonnais in 2007 in a shirt carrying the latest club crest. Benzema made 112 club appearances for Les Gones between 2004–2009 and scored 43 goals.