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How football tycoon gave Lyon a new lease of life

By in News, Sports News
Getty Images
Elizabeth Botcherby
BBC Sport journalist
Sophia Hartley
BBC World Service

Success is synonymous with Olympique Lyonnais Feminin.

Since being established in 2004, the French club have become one of the superpowers in women’s football, lifting 38 trophies across the domestic and European stage.

Their record in the Women’s Champions League is unparalleled, winning the competition eight times in an 11-year period between 2011 and 2022.

While Lyon remain a formidable force in the women’s game, with a record-extending 12th European final appearance on the horizon if they overcome Arsenal over the next fortnight, other teams are catching up in terms of both investment and on-field success.

In recent years they have been usurped on the European stage by fellow semi-finalists Barcelona, who are just three matches from a third Champions League title in a row.

From ‘ahead of his time’ Aulas to billionaire Kang

Jean-Michel Aulas lifts the Women's Champions League trophy with Lyon's playersGetty Images

For more than 30 years, local businessman Aulas was Lyon.

After becoming owner and president in 1987, following pleas from the city’s mayor and F1 legend Alain Prost, he oversaw the men’s club’s transformation from a debt-ridden club languishing in the second tier to serial trophy-winners throughout the 2000s.

Determined to replicate that success in women’s football, he launched OL Feminin in 2004 and, under his ownership, the club attracted top overseas players, championed French talent like Wendie Renard, and opened France’s first mixed-gender academy.

It took three years to deliver silverware, winning the Premiere Ligue in 2006-07. The rest is history.

“This guy was ahead of his time,” former Lyon defender Lucy Bronze told the BBC’s World Service. “To have someone that powerful say I want the women’s team to do well, I want them to be the best, I want to give them everything.

Lucy Bronze celebrating with Lyon fans in March 2018Getty Images

Aulas’ ownership ended in 2022 when Eagle Football became the majority shareholders of the OL Groupe, which encompassed both the men’s and women’s teams – as well as a majority stake in NWSL side Seattle Reign, and he resigned from his 36-year presidency the following year.

In 2023, the women’s team changed hands again, with South Korea-born American businesswoman Kang, who made her fortune in healthcare IT, taking on majority ownership and making it a separate entity – “independent” – from the men’s team.

“We have reached the end of our model a bit,” chief executive Vincent Ponsot said. “I think we needed a new lease of life, a new project. That is exactly what Michele brought with a much more global vision.

Who is Michele Kang?

Lyon owner Michele KangGetty Images

Described by the Financial Times as “arguably the first tycoon in women’s football”, Kang is a relative latecomer to football.

She first became interested in the sport after meeting the World Cup-winning US women’s team in 2019 and has since built up a portfolio of teams under her Kynisca Sports International group. In addition to Lyon, she has been the majority owner of NWSL team Washington Spirit since 2022 and purchased Women’s Championship side London City Lionesses in 2023.

“I realised these are the best of the best athletes around the world,” Kang said, reflecting on her meeting with the USWNT.

“I saw a significant lack of resources and attention. I saw the possibility of how women’s football could explode with a little nudge and a little investment.

“I am not alone and there are a lot of people who share the same passion. Two billion people watch the World Cup – it’s growing.”

Kang’s interest isn’t limited to multi-club ownership, however, with a number of multi-million pound investments in women’s sport, including a £39m global investment in improving the health of elite female athletes.

Her plans for Lyon are no less grand. Her long-term ambitions include the construction of a dedicated women’s centre, with a 15-18,000-seater stadium and a bigger training facility, while she has already invested heavily in improving the club’s backroom staff.

“The first thing she said to me was ‘Vincent, what do you have to do for the OL women’s team to have the same supervisions as the professional men’s team?’. That was in August 2023,” Ponsot said.

“I told her, ‘we have to hire 11 people to the staff’, and she said, ‘go on then’. Two months later, we had 11 more people and 24 staff to improve the support to players so they can perform.

“The main thing we have evolved is in the performance sector. We have full-time nutritionists, physiotherapists, doctors, a performance manager, a psychologist. We have everything we need for the players to be in the best conditions to perform like the men’s team.”

Lyon midfielder and USA captain Lindsey Heaps added: “[Michele] is incredible. I have never seen anything like this in the women’s game, the sort of investment but also the way she speaks.

‘A vicious circle’ – the challenges in France

Lyon taking on Chelsea in the Women's Champions League in March 2023Getty Images

Another of Kang’s priorities is increasing attendances at Lyon fixtures.

“If you ask many female players what is at the top of your wishlist, they don’t say I want to get paid more, I want bigger cars. They say, ‘I want to play against the best players and best teams in a sellout stadium’. It’s my job that we fill the stadium,” she said.

Lyon will travel to Emirates Stadium on Saturday (12:30 BST) for the first leg of their Champions League semi-final with Arsenal – a stadium where the Gunners recorded an average attendance of 52,029 across six matches last season.

“When you see that Arsenal are filling Emirates Stadium, there is no reason why we can’t,” said Ponsot. “We realised that women’s football has an audience with a strong increase in appetite, but we are having trouble making it a reality.”

Lyon are on course for a record-extending 18th league title this season, having already booked their place in May’s end-of-season play-offs. Indeed, they have only lost two league matches over the past four seasons.

That sustained success, coupled with Aulas’ unmatched support, is seen by some as having had a negative impact on crowds, media interest, and investment in France.

Women’s football journalist Assile Toufaily said: “Some will say ‘why should we come and watch football that isn’t attractive because the level isn’t that good?’ We know OL are going to smash the other clubs 7-0. Fans aren’t intrigued to come and watch.

“They say if you want to have a better level of football, investors have to invest. Investors will then say why should we invest if the media isn’t promoting the game? So you find yourself in a vicious circle and it’s been like this for years.”

But she does not see Aulas’ investment as the problem.

“If he didn’t invest in 2004, maybe no-one would ever have done it in France. Aulas isn’t to blame, but maybe the problem is others didn’t follow along.”

Kang, unsurprisingly, is undaunted by this, working with Ponsot to “find the profile” of women’s football fans, with their own research indicating only a 5% overlap between fans who watch men’s and women’s matches.

She will likely find a powerful ally in Aulas, who was elected vice-president of the French Football Federation in December 2023 and has taken over responsibility for development of women’s football.

“The French league is going to be very strong in years to come,” vowed Aulas.

Related topics

  • Football
  • Women’s Football

Raw Material Exports Keep Africa Poor — Adesina

By in News, Nigeria News

President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, has called on African nations to put an end to the export of raw materials if the continent is to overcome poverty and underdevelopment.

According to data from the Office of US Trade Representative and other multilateral institutions, Africa accounts for less than 2% of global manufacturing.

In a post shared on Thursday via his official X handle, Adesina stressed need for Africa to shift from being a supplier of unprocessed commodities to a producer of value-added goods.

“Africa must end the exports of its raw materials. The export of raw materials is the door to poverty. The export of value-added products is the highway to wealth. And Africa is tired of being poor,” he wrote.

Despite Africa being home to the world’s most sought-after raw materials, its share of global trade remains under 3%. Efforts to change this narrative have gained momentum in recent years. Initiatives such as the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) are designed to enhance intra-African trade, boost manufacturing, and encourage value addition across sectors.

READ ALSO: EU To Invest In Nigeria’s Solid Minerals To Diversify Trade

Adesina has consistently advocated for policies that promote agro-industrialisation, energy expansion, and improved infrastructure as a foundation for transforming Africa’s economies.

Last week, Adesina criticised the disproportionate allocation of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), revealing that Africa received just $33 billion, only 4.5% of the $650 billion issued globally.

The AfDB president stressed that the distribution model of the SDRs failed to reflect the urgent financial needs of Africa, which bore some of the deepest economic scars from the pandemic, with limited fiscal capacity to implement a robust recovery plan.

Portrait of amputee Palestinian boy from Gaza wins World Press Photo award

By in News, World News

The solemn portrait of a nine-year-old Palestinian boy, whose arms were severed and mutilated during an Israeli attack on Gaza City, has won the 2025 World Press Photo of the Year award.

The picture, given the accolade on Thursday, was taken by Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times newspaper, and depicts Mahmoud Ajjour.

“One of the most difficult things Mahmoud’s mother explained to me was how when Mahmoud first came to the realisation that his arms were amputated, the first sentence he said to her was, ‘How will I be able to hug you’?” said Abu Elouf.

Ajjour was evacuated to Doha, Qatar, following the Israeli explosion in March last year, an attack in the continuing war that has killed at least 51,025 Palestinians, wounded about 116,432 others and reduced much of the enclave to rubble.

The photographer is also from Gaza and was herself evacuated in December 2023. She now takes photos of badly wounded Palestinians based in Doha.

“This is a quiet photo that speaks loudly. It tells the story of one boy, but also of a wider war that will have an impact for generations,” said Joumana El Zein Khoury, World Press Photo’s executive director.

The jury praised the photo’s “strong composition and attention to light” and its thought-provoking subject matter, especially questions raised over Mahmoud’s future.

It also lauded how the photo depicts “the dehumanisation of a region, and about the relentless targeting of journalists in Gaza alongside the continued denial of access to international reporters seeking to expose the realities of this war”.

The boy is now learning to play games on his phone, write, and open doors with his feet, but still needs special assistance for most daily activities, such as eating and dressing, the jury said.

“Mahmoud’s dream is simple: he wants to get prosthetics and live his life as any other child,” said the World Press Photo organisers in a statement.

The statement cited the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA)’s recent estimation that by December last year, Gaza had more child amputees per capita than anywhere else in the world.

“Children are disproportionately impacted by the war,” the jury stated.

Runner-up prize

The jury also selected two photos for the runner-up prize.

The first, entitled “Droughts in the Amazon” by Musuk Nolte for Panos Pictures and the Bertha Foundation, shows a man on a dried-up river bed in the Amazon carrying supplies to a village once accessible by boat.

The second, “Night Crossing” by John Moore shooting for Getty Images, depicts Chinese migrants huddling near a fire during a cold rain after crossing the US-Mexico border.

Chinese migrants warm themselves under a cold rain after crossing the US-Mexico border, Campo, California, on March 7, 2024 [John Moore/ Getty Images]

The jury sifted through 59,320 photographs from 3,778 photojournalists to select 42 prize-winning shots from around the world.

Nairobi-based Luis Tato won in the “Stories” category for the Africa region for a selection of photos depicting Kenya’s youth uprising.

Jerome Brouillet won in the “Singles” category Asia Pacific and Oceania for his iconic picture of surfer Gabriel Medina seemingly floating above the waves.

Clarens Siffroy won in the “Stories” category North and Central America for his coverage of the gang crisis in Haiti.

Portrait of amputee Palestinian boy from Gaza wins World Press Photo award

By in News, World News

The solemn portrait of a nine-year-old Palestinian boy, whose arms were severed and mutilated during an Israeli attack on Gaza City, has won the 2025 World Press Photo of the Year award.

The picture, given the accolade on Thursday, was taken by Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times newspaper, and depicts Mahmoud Ajjour.

“One of the most difficult things Mahmoud’s mother explained to me was how when Mahmoud first came to the realisation that his arms were amputated, the first sentence he said to her was, ‘How will I be able to hug you’?” said Abu Elouf.

Ajjour was evacuated to Doha, Qatar, following the Israeli explosion in March last year, an attack in the continuing war that has killed at least 51,025 Palestinians, wounded about 116,432 others and reduced much of the enclave to rubble.

The photographer is also from Gaza and was herself evacuated in December 2023. She now takes photos of badly wounded Palestinians based in Doha.

“This is a quiet photo that speaks loudly. It tells the story of one boy, but also of a wider war that will have an impact for generations,” said Joumana El Zein Khoury, World Press Photo’s executive director.

The jury praised the photo’s “strong composition and attention to light” and its thought-provoking subject matter, especially questions raised over Mahmoud’s future.

It also lauded how the photo depicts “the dehumanisation of a region, and about the relentless targeting of journalists in Gaza alongside the continued denial of access to international reporters seeking to expose the realities of this war”.

The boy is now learning to play games on his phone, write, and open doors with his feet, but still needs special assistance for most daily activities, such as eating and dressing, the jury said.

“Mahmoud’s dream is simple: he wants to get prosthetics and live his life as any other child,” said the World Press Photo organisers in a statement.

The statement cited the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA)’s recent estimation that by December last year, Gaza had more child amputees per capita than anywhere else in the world.

“Children are disproportionately impacted by the war,” the jury stated.

Runner-up prize

The jury also selected two photos for the runner-up prize.

The first, entitled “Droughts in the Amazon” by Musuk Nolte for Panos Pictures and the Bertha Foundation, shows a man on a dried-up river bed in the Amazon carrying supplies to a village once accessible by boat.

The second, “Night Crossing” by John Moore shooting for Getty Images, depicts Chinese migrants huddling near a fire during a cold rain after crossing the US-Mexico border.

Chinese migrants warm themselves under a cold rain after crossing the US-Mexico border, Campo, California, on March 7, 2024 [John Moore/ Getty Images]

The jury sifted through 59,320 photographs from 3,778 photojournalists to select 42 prize-winning shots from around the world.

Nairobi-based Luis Tato won in the “Stories” category for the Africa region for a selection of photos depicting Kenya’s youth uprising.

Jerome Brouillet won in the “Singles” category Asia Pacific and Oceania for his iconic picture of surfer Gabriel Medina seemingly floating above the waves.

Clarens Siffroy won in the “Stories” category North and Central America for his coverage of the gang crisis in Haiti.

Portrait of amputee Palestinian boy from Gaza wins World Press Photo award

By in News, World News

The solemn portrait of a nine-year-old Palestinian boy, whose arms were severed and mutilated during an Israeli attack on Gaza City, has won the 2025 World Press Photo of the Year award.

The picture, given the accolade on Thursday, was taken by Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times newspaper, and depicts Mahmoud Ajjour.

“One of the most difficult things Mahmoud’s mother explained to me was how when Mahmoud first came to the realisation that his arms were amputated, the first sentence he said to her was, ‘How will I be able to hug you’?” said Abu Elouf.

Ajjour was evacuated to Doha, Qatar, following the Israeli explosion in March last year, an attack in the continuing war that has killed at least 51,025 Palestinians, wounded about 116,432 others and reduced much of the enclave to rubble.

The photographer is also from Gaza and was herself evacuated in December 2023. She now takes photos of badly wounded Palestinians based in Doha.

“This is a quiet photo that speaks loudly. It tells the story of one boy, but also of a wider war that will have an impact for generations,” said Joumana El Zein Khoury, World Press Photo’s executive director.

The jury praised the photo’s “strong composition and attention to light” and its thought-provoking subject matter, especially questions raised over Mahmoud’s future.

It also lauded how the photo depicts “the dehumanisation of a region, and about the relentless targeting of journalists in Gaza alongside the continued denial of access to international reporters seeking to expose the realities of this war”.

The boy is now learning to play games on his phone, write, and open doors with his feet, but still needs special assistance for most daily activities, such as eating and dressing, the jury said.

“Mahmoud’s dream is simple: he wants to get prosthetics and live his life as any other child,” said the World Press Photo organisers in a statement.

The statement cited the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA)’s recent estimation that by December last year, Gaza had more child amputees per capita than anywhere else in the world.

“Children are disproportionately impacted by the war,” the jury stated.

Runner-up prize

The jury also selected two photos for the runner-up prize.

The first, entitled “Droughts in the Amazon” by Musuk Nolte for Panos Pictures and the Bertha Foundation, shows a man on a dried-up river bed in the Amazon carrying supplies to a village once accessible by boat.

The second, “Night Crossing” by John Moore shooting for Getty Images, depicts Chinese migrants huddling near a fire during a cold rain after crossing the US-Mexico border.

Chinese migrants warm themselves under a cold rain after crossing the US-Mexico border, Campo, California, on March 7, 2024 [John Moore/ Getty Images]

The jury sifted through 59,320 photographs from 3,778 photojournalists to select 42 prize-winning shots from around the world.

Nairobi-based Luis Tato won in the “Stories” category for the Africa region for a selection of photos depicting Kenya’s youth uprising.

Jerome Brouillet won in the “Singles” category Asia Pacific and Oceania for his iconic picture of surfer Gabriel Medina seemingly floating above the waves.

Clarens Siffroy won in the “Stories” category North and Central America for his coverage of the gang crisis in Haiti.

Faux feminism has left the planet

By in News, World News

On Monday, April 14, six elite American women blasted off into space from west Texas on a self-piloting rocket ship developed by the space technology company Blue Origin, owned by bazillionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The “crew” of the much-ballyhooed all-female flight – marketed by Blue Origin as a giant leap not only for womankind but for the entire world – included pop star Katy Perry, television personality Gayle King, and Bezos’s fiancee Lauren Sanchez, author of the children’s book The Fly Who Flew to Space and the organiser of the wannabe feminist space excursion.

In preparation for the star-studded spectacle, Elle magazine ran a fawning cover story on the “historic mission”, which the magazine described as “the first time anybody went to space with their hair and makeup done”. By the end of the article, which is basically a continuous succession of aneurysm-inducing lines, one finds oneself with little hope for the world aside from that an asteroid would strike and just put an end to it all.

Perry, for example, is quoted as declaring that “we are going to put the ‘ass’ in astronaut”, while also sharing the scintillating logistics of celebrity space travel: “I was like, What am I going to wear?” Then there’s an exchange between Sanchez, who predicts that “we’re going to have [eye]lash extensions flying in the capsule!”, and King, who wonders if the lashes will “stay on”, prompting the response from Sanchez: “Mine are glued on. They’re good.”

Fellow “crew” member Aisha Bowe, an aerospace engineer and entrepreneur, explains that she “wanted to test out” her hair to make sure it was rocket-ready: “So I skydived in Dubai with similar hair to make sure I would be good.”

None of this is to say, of course, that women can’t care about their eyelashes and hair. But in a world in which a whole lot of women don’t have money to eat – much less skydive in one of the planet’s most expensive places to see how their hair might fare during an 11-minute, multimillion-dollar jaunt in outer space – such chatter does nothing to further female empowerment.

It does everything, however, to reinforce inequality – and makes a mockery of Sanchez’s pre-flight claim that “we’re going to be able to come back and inspire people and bring people together.” Following the completion of Monday’s flight, she was quoted as reflecting on her quick inspection of the Earth from above: “You look at this, and you’re like, ‘We’re all in this together.’”

To be sure, it requires an astronomical hypocrisy to invoke a collective “we” when not all of “us” are engaged to the world’s second-richest human, who as of March had a net worth of $231.2bn. We’re also not really “in this together” when Bezos himself is actively abetting the obliteration of solidarity in the United States, cosying up to President Donald Trump – whose anti-feminist agenda is, mind you, clear as day – as he goes about happily dismantling whatever semblance of rights remain in the country.

The Blue Origin website assures visitors that the company “exists for the benefit of Earth” and boasts a “passion for preserving Earth”, which is “humanity’s forever home”. To that end, Blue Origin allegedly strives “to minimize our carbon footprint and promote sustainable practices in all aspects of our operations” – reusable rockets, reusable engines, and so on – which ultimately amounts to nothing but your typical corporate claptrap that allows the super-rich to keep annihilating the earth and its atmosphere while claiming not to.

And it’s not just Blue Origin that has enabled Bezos’s own carbon footprint to asphyxiate “humanity’s forever home”. He remains the executive chairman and largest shareholder at Amazon, which, as the Washington, DC-based group Food & Water Watch noted last year, has generated hundreds of millions of pounds of plastic packaging – “part of a larger crisis clogging our planet with plastic pollution and setting our climate ablaze”.

The report explains that as plastic breaks down, “it gets into the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe, harming humans and ecosystems around the globe.”

No wonder the rich are looking to escape.

Obviously, Bezos is not singlehandedly responsible for the Earth’s demise. There are plenty of other plutocrats who have done their fair share while preaching sustainability, including Elon Musk – the world’s richest person, founder of the space technology company SpaceX, and aspiring coloniser of Mars.

But Blue Origin’s “historic” publicity stunt has put a faux feminist face on a system predicated on destruction and inequality – one in which Americans must continue to die of poverty on a huge scale so that the elite minority can ride around in self-piloting rockets. Why spend billions of dollars to alleviate terrestrial suffering when you can shoot for the stars instead?

In the end, the stunt did not receive quite the rave reviews that were expected from the press and social media commentariat. It was so bad, in fact, that even The New York Times felt compelled to use the word “capitalism” in its assessment that “Blue Origin’s all-female flight proves that women are now free to enjoy capitalism’s most extravagant spoils alongside rich men.”

Indeed, this is capitalism on rocket fuel – taking acute socioeconomic injustice and blasting it into outer space.

Perry, who dramatically kissed the ground after descending from the rocket ship, professed to now “feel super connected to love” and pronounced the trip “all for the benefit of Earth”.

The vast majority of the earth’s inhabitants would no doubt be forgiven for failing to detect any sort of “benefit” – like, say, the Palestinian women and children currently being bombed to smithereens in the US-backed genocide in the Gaza Strip.

In the meantime, we can only hope everyone’s eyelash extensions stayed on.