AS Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain met at the Stade Louis II in the Municipality on Saturday, within round 23 of the Ligue 1 roller coaster, and the hosts kept the three points to themselves with a 3-1 victory. The goals were the work of Aleksandr Golovin (4′) and Wissam Ben Yedder (18′, 45’+2) for Monaco, and Warren Zaire-Emery (39′) for the visitors.
Deserved Monaco victory
This is the second time on the trot PSG have come to Stade Louis II and left with their heads bowed after conceding three times. Ben Yedder also scored twice the last time the two teams met there, back in March last year, with Kevin Volland adding one in between. Well, at least PSG got one back this time.
In that match, it was mostly Aurelien Tchouameni whose presence in the middle of the park repeatedly got in the way of anything PSG tried to do to organize an attack. One would think that with the young midfielder now safely out of the way, playing for Real Madrid, PSG might be able to do more, but they were outplayed again.
There can be no questions whatsoever about Monaco’s triumph being well deserved. With only 41% of possession, Philippe Clement’s men took a total of 19 shots, nine on target, while PSG fired only seven times, hitting the frame of the goal just twice. Chance after chance the hosts created, with Gianluigi Donnarumma turning out the main reason why they didn’t score five or more.
Apart from the goals they scored, Both Golovin and Ben Yedder had a couple of excellent chances to hurt the champions further, as well as right-back Ruben Aguilar who frequently made runs into the box to try and get on the end of crosses from the left.
The PSG rotation
To be fair to PSG, it was a very rotated lineup Christophe Galtier sent out. Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe, the two main stars of last year’s World Cup, were out of contention through injury, as were Renato Sanches, Marco Verratti, Georginio Wijnaldum and Nordi Mukiele, and the coach left the likes of Achraf Hakimi, Nuno Mendes, Presnel Kimpembe and Sergio Ramos on the bench.
The reason behind the decision to rest as many players as possible was quite clear – on Tuesday evening, PSG…
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