« It still feels like we have to win the championship without any problem. But Ligue 1 is of a very high level, you just have to see how the teams behave on the European scene. » There is no denying that Luis Enrique has a sense of diplomacy. On the eve of facing AS Monaco, the Paris Saint-Germain coach played the card of (false) modesty before, in the process, going to crush (2-4) the princely club on his Rock and to fly out of the Ligue 1 rankings with a ten-point lead at the top. All this before the Christmas holidays. We would be tempted to say that the championship is over, unlike Luis Enrique who, for his part, must keep this kind of consideration away from the microphones of press conferences. A bit like his captain Marquinhos, also very careful in his declarations: « The title? It’s still early, there are a lot of things that can happen, but it’s a very important goal for the club and it hurts when we don’t win it.analyzed the Brazilian after the meeting this Wednesday evening. To win it, you have to win these direct confrontations. When you’re champion, you don’t realize the importance of these matches, but when you lose them, you realize how much of a difference it makes. »
Major missed meetings
That said, we would also like to see, for once, a declaration that contrasts with the usual lukewarmness shown by French football. But we suspect that if this were the case, there would be no shortage of analysts from all sides to remind PSG of its current 25e place in the Champions League and that this would supplant the sickening domination of the capital club within a championship that its detractors never tire of nicknamed Farmers League. It’s hard to prove them wrong. Like the Bundesliga where, apart from “ the accident » Bayer Leverkusen last season, Bayern Munich reign supreme, Ligue 1 is a championship whose outcome is known in advance 99% of the time. To believe that Olympique de Marseille or Monaco could stand up to the Parisians, currently at full speed on the highway of their 13e title of national champion, was a pipe dream.
Even with a potential pace of one match every three days between January and March 2025, it is hard to imagine Luis Enrique’s troops collapsing along the way, for a very simple reason (and which is partly right to Marquinhos): it’s not PSG who are super strong, it’s their opponents who collapse psychologically when facing them. “ We’re a little disappointed because we came looking for something here. We missed playing our game because when we did, we created opportunities, but it was quite complicated », analyzed Georges Mikautadze last Sunday after the defeat of his Olympique Lyonnais at the Parc des Princes (3-1). And the Georgian international conceded that « PSG was takeable. It’s just that we did things wrong. We could have gotten back to the score. We will concentrate and see what went wrong for the second part of the season ». Not sure that this self-criticism is enough to really reverse the trend.
Long live the culture of the moment!
Ultimately, the real loser from this state of affairs is Ligue 1 itself. A championship in which the future champion takes the chestnuts out of the fire before mid-season does not make many people dream, not even the supporters of said big name. Therefore, the public must be content to take pleasure in moments one shot. Like when AJ Auxerre snatched a heroic 0-0 from L’Abbé-Deschamps against Paris, or last Sunday again, during this Marseille-Lille clash, whose Dantesque scenario converted this banal 1-1 into a potential match of the season.
What if, ultimately, modern football consisted of looking beyond the title of national champion? Understand: a European qualification, followed by an epic journey? In any case, this is what those of Brest and Lille, and even Monaco currently, suggest. Three teams which undermine this old French tradition which consists of throwing away the European Cup to better concentrate on the championship. There is a certain logic in that after all, especially when, deprived of a true international star since the departure of Kylian Mbappé for Real Madrid, the average Ligue 1 public must be content to wait for the emergence of their successor to get glitter back in your eyes. Is this observation depressing? But whose fault is it? To PSG which vampirizes the competition – even without forcing – or to the latter which, almost 13 titles later, has still not managed to reverse the trend? Perhaps two weeks of winter break will help find the beginnings of an answer.
The ranking of the most highly rated Ligue 1 squads
