Champions Trophy: the probable composition of PSG with Donnarumma and the attacking trio Dembélé-Doué-Barcola

The courtesy visit had the merit of setting the tone. To remind those who had perhaps imagined that this relocation to Doha would relieve this first meeting of the year of much more palpable pressure in France, that this Champions Trophy transferred to the Gulf has nothing a gala match or a simple get-back meeting after the end-of-year celebrations.

This Saturday evening, on the lawn of the original 974 stadium, beyond Nasser Al-Khelaïfi and Luis Campos, the “usual Parisian aéropage”, it is under the eyes of the Emir of Qatar, Tamim Ben Hamad Al Thani, that the PSG players had their final training session before challenging Monaco, Sunday, 5:30 p.m., as part of the Champions Trophy. A competition that PSG, winner of ten of the last eleven editions, has, as the winners remind us, made its own since its passage under the Qatari flag and which it must, for the symbol but also for the honor, know how to preserve this Sunday under the gaze of its head of state owner.

Since he says “I have the feeling of playing at home and the players feel it too”, there is almost no doubt that Luis Enrique will not refrain from fielding what resembles his typical team. If in the conception of the Spanish technician, no surprises are of course to be excluded, his starting eleven should bring together the men who reached the truce with confidence or with the most pep in their calves.

A little less than three weeks after being scarred by Singo’s crampons at the Stade Louis-II, Gianluigi Donnarumma is thus able to return from the cage but will not meet the man who injured him, the Monegasque being suspended. The Italian goalkeeper should face him, a defense made up of Hakimi, Marquinhos, Pacho and Nuno Mendes, who did not make the trip to the Principality on December 18.

In the midfield, Vitinha should occupy the role of sentry and be accompanied by Warren Zaire-Emery on his right and Joao Neves on his left. The possibilities are wider in attack. But it cannot be ruled out that the Spanish coach renews the triplet which began in the Principality for the last match of the season and which saw Ousmane Dembélé score a double and Désiré Doué, in false nine, also find the net . Bradley Barcola had been less visible than his partners. But the cut undoubtedly did him the most good and since Enrique did not seem, in 2024, to make an attack with a real 9 like Ramos or Kolo Muani a preferred option, there is no reason to do so. see a change of heart in 2025.