Paris Saint-Germain won 3 goals to 1 yesterday against Olympique Lyonnais after a great evening at the Parc des Princes. Among the Parisians who showed off: Désiré Doué, surprise starter in place of Bradley Barcola last night.
I really liked this evening.
Already because casually we were left with two draws in a row in Ligue 1facing Nantes and to Auxerre so reconnecting with success feels good, it reminds the competition who is the boss, and the boss is the PSG.
I also liked it because as I said on Friday, we won against one of the best teams in Ligue 1 over the last few weeks.
Lyon is a truly great team in our championship, with talent and fairly developed collective principles.
We (fortunately) saw little of it yesterday, just a quarter of an hour at the end of the first period, 15 minutes where we conceded a goal and we could have been penalized with a penalty which the referee did not wanted to see too much.
But if we saw Lyon interesting that a quarter of an hour into the meeting is because the PSG put himself in the best position to thwart this great Lyon team.
And this is the last reason why I liked this match, because we had a new demonstration that this team knows how to put on the costumes of special occasions during the most prestigious (and complicated) oppositions of our championship.
And we notably had the first 30 minutes of very high quality.
Rotation success
It’s logical, we’re at the end of the calendar year, it’s almost the holidays… plus the PSG confront Monaco there in two days before going to Lens for the 32nd finals of the Coupe de France.
So if we can do a little rotation, it allows all the players to be involved, even those who play a little less, and it helps those who gave a lot in the first part of the season.
And among the replacements who stand out: Désiré Doué.
Yesterday we had the first big performance of Désiré Doué under the colors of Paris Saint-Germain as holder.
We had already had good entries, like the one facing Salzbourg last Tuesday, well he took the place of Bradley Barcola in the XI, and he responded.
A decisive pass for Ousmane Dembélé after an individual exploit, a penalty provoked after again an action full of accuracy.
He almost scored an extra goal, but ended up being offside d’Hakimi canceled it.
It was a very reassuring performance because we could start to wonder if the pressure wasn’t too heavy on his shoulders… well no, he knew how to put himself out there to cause headaches for his trainer.
Second part of the season “à la Barcola”?
It is one of the leitmotifs of Luis Enrique : each player is in the same boat and therefore each player may be required to be on the bench if his performance does not meet the required level.
This was the case of Stagger over the last few weeks, and as at the same time Désiré Doué remained on a good entry to Salzbourghe deserved to start against Lyon.
A trust that he reciprocated in his coach in the best possible way and I find that last night’s performance really shuffles the cards on the offensive positions: if Désiré Doué becomes a real offensive option in the second part of the season by increasing his level of play, Paris Saint-Germain will emerge a winner.
That’s a bit what happened with Stagger last year, with a discreet first part of the season before becoming one of the key players at the start of 2024.
And who knows? With stiff competition for his position, perhaps Bradley Barcola will also raise the level of its performance.
So the method is the right one, now we have to hope that it bears fruit until the end of the season in as many competitions as possible.
