What are sports without a good rivalry?

This weekend, the UEFA Women’s Champions League semi-finals kickoff with two French teams vying to push through to the final round. On Sunday April 24, Olympique Lyonnais, currently sitting atop the D1 Arkema standings, take on archrival Paris Saint-German for what promises to be a standout match.

Lyon has won four of its six UEFA WCL matches against Paris, but its hopes to contest the title was truncated last season by the Parisiennes. UEFA has a good rundown on some of the tension-filled storylines for this matchup. But also of note is that PSG is still reveling in good vibes following their extra time victory over Bayern Munich in the last leg of the WCL quarterfinals.

Of course, the Lyon-Paris rivalry goes deeper than just at the European level. The two teams are vying to win the D1 Arkema this season, and there’s an outside chance that, with three games left in the season, PSG could once again best OL as they did last year.

It would be a coup de grace given the drama that encircled Paris last fall. Kheira Hamaroui was beaten by masked men after a team dinner last November, while teammate Aminata Diallo was detained by police in conjunction with the assault. The ensuing months have not eased the intersquad tensions, which spilled over into the press last month. Despite it all, PSG have pulled together on-pitch, at least, led by the striking abilities of Marie-Antoinette Katoto, who scored France’s second goal in its 2-1 win over Wales on April 8 for World Cup 2023 qualification.  

That’s why for this WCL series, I’m thinking about rivalries. There are certain ingredients that go into making any great sports rivalry. As Time’s Sean Gregory notes, besides geography, team ability, and fan culture, rivalries are fueled by contrasts.

Perhaps personalities, or contrasting personalities, too.

But given the relatively recent rise of professional women’s football—and the even later arrival of its mediatization—what are the roles that journalists, as well as scholars, play in making and preserving great rivalries in the women’s game?

•  What is the right mix of retelling game tactics and on-field drama versus player personalities and backstories?

•  How much are great sports rivalries the products of intergenerational stories (massively is my initial sentiment)—and, thus, what obligation do teams, media outlets, or team archives have to unearth and preserve these longer-term backstories that span the amateur-to-professional eras?

•  To that end, are we as fans—as well as media members and historians—under greater obligation to preserve and pass around (i.e. to a wider contemporary audience) the stories of great sports rivals, not just pass them down?  

• And, given the very international nature of elite professional women’s football today, how do we best storytell the ways that informal sports diplomacy among teammates is spreading knowledge in uncountable ways?

This last point is vitally important from where I sit, given that both OL and PSG rosters are half French and half international. Perhaps in the end, the Lyon-Paris football rivalry is actually a glocal one.