At the Parc des Princes,
A standing ovation and a big hug, it was the minimum union that Mauricio Pochettino could offer Kylian Mbappé after his new pig match, Sunday night, against Monaco at the Parc des Princes. Like Tuesday, against Bruges in the Champions League, the number 7 still had to get away with it all alone like a big man to offer PSG and his coach a fourteenth victory in eighteen league games and prevent them from a new burst of derogatory comments . Even so, they won’t cut it, but let’s stick to Bondy’s kid first. Author of his 99th and 100th pawns in Ligue 1 in the Parisian jersey, Mbappé received a tribute as deserved as it was supported by the Monegasque coach.
“It was easier when he played for Monaco,” Kovac first joked in the post-match conf. Today, Mbappé is a world top 3. I think he will win quite a few Golden Balls in the future because Messi and Ronaldo are not eternal. He is the player who makes the difference at PSG, we saw him again in Lens last week [avec une passe dé pour Wijnaldum dans les arrêts de jeu]. He has everything, speed, technique, power, it’s impossible to defend against him one on one. But when you defend with three above, it offers space for the others… If he continues like this and he doesn’t get hurt, he will go… (he rolls his eyes)… The ceiling! “.
Kovac is right, Mbappé is the providential man of PSG. And his trainer is tempted to add. Because without his flashes of light, what would Pochettino be like today? We are thinking in particular of important matches like Lyon (2-1) or Leipzig (3-2) at the Parc des Princes, which could quickly have caused trouble on the Argentinian if Kyky had not come to save him.
In Paris, time passes and the evils remain
Faced with a valiant Monegasque team, but which no longer looks at all like the beautiful oiled machine that had come to teach the Parisians a lesson last season, PSG once again displayed a face if not laughable, at least worrying. In the background? Emptiness, emptiness and more emptiness. Caught in the throat of entry, the Reds and Blues owed their salvation only to a strike from Diop on the post and a very good Gigio Donnarumma in goal. Before Mbappé therefore takes care of folding the case in the first period, on peno first, on a roll of the law – which now serves as a trademark – then. For the rest, this match against Monaco was only a vulgar copy and paste of what we have seen since the start of the season, so much so that we do not really know what to write after the PSG meetings.
It is obviously a problem that Mauricio Pochettino does not pose. The Argentinian coach persists in telling us every week that his team is progressing. As if, deep down, it was he and he alone that he was trying to convince at all costs. New proof of denial, Sunday, in the auditorium of the Park after the victory: “Perhaps the performance of Bruges was better but the performance remains serious, professional and the victory is deserved. We progress slowly, step by step. We have a special team, with a specific workforce, but we are making progress in the areas we have targeted. With the talented players we have, with the work we do, we are doing everything to be ready for the meetings in February and March. “
Pochettino, where the art of refusing the obvious
And when a Spanish journalist asks him dress to quantify these famous little things, the former manager of Spurs stammers. “It is sometimes hard to measure these improvements because they are done little by little. But there were plenty of positive things, he said. We recovered a lot of high balls, we were compact, we reduced the spaces, we just need to maintain that for an entire match, but few teams are able to do that today in Europe. “Again relaunched by a colleague on the recurring lacks displayed by his team,” Poché “then took the time to detail the results of the big teams on the continent this weekend to support his point.
Silence, it turns: “There is no team in Europe which dominates for 90 minutes. We saw it yesterday with City who struggled, Liverpool who won on penal, Chelsea who won on the wire, ditto for Manchester in Norwich. Bayern who narrowly won after being led against Bochum at home. “While it is true that some of the continent’s top names are sometimes just fine, 1. It doesn’t happen every weekend and 2. You still have to have your ankles firmly anchored to the ground to dare to compare the style of play of City, Liverpool or Bayern to that of his PSG. It is also hard to imagine that, on the side of Doha, we are also satisfied with the coach’s verbal pirouettes in the face of the weakness of this team since the start of the season, Mbappé or not.