Paris Saint-Germain’s title procession takes a hit at Lyon
Paris Saint-Germain – 73 points. Everyone else – nowhere.
Unbeaten for nearly a year, PSG’s crushing domination of French football is such that when they drew 0-0 with Lille last month, you could almost feel the tremors. They promptly squashed their old rivals Olympique Lyonnais 3-0 in the cup, having earlier beaten them 5-1 in the league, so when the two sides met again on Sunday, most people expected PSG to extend their unbeaten run against French opposition to 47 matches.
They came up short thanks to a steely display by the home team, graced with two fine goals, the second of which came via a flick over a defender and a mid-air volley with the outside of the wrong foot.
The scorer was Sergi Darder – signed for €12 million from Malaga on last summer’s transfer deadline, and not an automatic first-choice, which goes to show there is more to French football than meets the eye.
Dimitri Payet, who has lit up the Premier League with West Ham, is only an occasional player for the national team. N’Golo Kanté, the man at the hub of Leicester’s drive for the title, has never played for his country at any level. His pedigree was basically two years at Caen, better known for achieving promotion than winning trophies.
PSG were under strength in midfield on Sunday. Angel Di Maria was absent, Marco Verratti is nursing a troublesome groin injury, Blaise Matuidi came on as a substitute late in the game.
But Lyon have themselves been hit by injuries. After a tremendous run – 36 league games unbeaten is a French record – PSG are perhaps showing some slight signs of fatigue, which could put their Champions League match against Chelsea next week on a knife-edge.
Laurent Blanc has mainly been fretting about the form of his goalkeeper Kevin Trapp.
The German has become first choice this season ahead of Salvatore Sirigu, and PSG have a tremendous defensive record with only 15 goals conceded in 28 league games and another four in Europe. But Trapp has looked accident-prone on occasion, as if his concentration was not always 100%.
There was nothing he could have done about either Lyon goal on Sunday. As Blanc put it after the match his team were “far too average, to say the least, to hope for more from this sort of game”. He put it down to a possible “decompression” – the team missing the need to battle for points, even in a big match.
“We haven’t always been good in the first quarter of an hour, nor in the last half-hour, but up till now we had the defensive solidity not to concede goals,” said Blanc.
“Today the mentality, aggression and commitment which enabled us to put together this unbeaten run disappeared, but it’s possible that we can rapidly recover that state of mind.”
PSG would not be the first side to come down to earth after hitting the heights. And it is wrong to assume Ligue 1 is exceptionally uncompetitive.
Milan once went 58 league games unbeaten. Bayern Munich set a German record of 53 games from 2012 to 2014. Juventus and Arsenal both fell one short of a 50-match run. So 36 league matches is not that exceptional, nor even the 46 in domestic competition.
Last season, PSG won the league by eight points – comfortable, but the same winning margin as there was in the Premier League and with a similar goal difference. Lyon, Marseille, and Monaco all put up a challenge at various stages.
A fourth consecutive league title is guaranteed. However Lyon secured seven in a row between 2001 and 2008, when they also reached the Champions League quarter-finals three years running.
With the resources of Qatar behind them, PSG are certainly in line to match that. Paris also has only one significant club, unlike cities such as London, Madrid, Manchester, and Milan.
But French football is still about a lot more than one club, and PSG have still to break the psychological barrier of competing in the Champions League semi-finals, which is why they will be especially keen to put Sunday’s defeat behind them.
