Between two European summits and three days after the magic of Manchester City in the Champions League (4-2), PSG overthrew Strasbourg on Saturday (3-1) thanks to the entry of Ousmane Dembélé and took at least temporarily the lead in Ligue 1. At Meinau, Luis Enrique’s men had the opportunity to confirm their return to the league after a bumpy start to the season.
Greatly overhauled and without the intensity of Wednesday evening in Manchester, the Parisians still managed to achieve a fourth success in a row in Ligue 1, even though everything seemed to be going very badly.
Entering the hour mark (63rd), Ousmane Dembélé, author of an assist, a goal (and a missed penalty) and a penultimate pass, put Paris back in the championship race, gaining full confidence before the European clash on Tuesday against FC Barcelona at the Parc des Princes.
As against Le Mans last weekend (3-1 victory), Luis Enrique rotated his squad widely, confirming the adage that he has one team for the championship and another for the Champions League.
But even with the luxury of having bench depth, PSG was much less dashing, apart from a few dangerous actions like at the start of the match: Akliouche crossed his shot too much (9th) and Ferran Torres’ head was deflected above the goal (11th).
Solid Safonov
“Each time, we have a plan for the short, medium and long term,” said the coach on Friday to the press, who has aligned a completely overhauled defensive line with Warren Zaire-Emery, Illia Zabarniy, Lucas Hernandez and Lucas Digne.
Among them, the last two are at fault for the opening of the score by Strasbourg: Lucas Hernandez does not go up on Giovanni Reyna, who has time to turn around to hit the ground at the near post and deceive Matveï Safonov.
On the other hand, the Parisian goalkeeper relaxed perfectly on a well-placed header from Conrad Harder (50th). The Russian also closed his near post – his weak point – on a strike from the Dane (68th).
Obviously not happy with the performance of some, the Spanish coach made his changes early in the match (53rd) by bringing in Vitinha, Désiré Doué and Nuno Mendes, who then left due to injury at the end of the match. At the hour mark, he brought in Ousmane Dembélé in place of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, who played another dull match and was never really dangerous.
It was his players on the big nights who changed everything. A few minutes later, Doué caused a handball in the Strasbourg area but Dembélé hit his penalty wide (72nd), further extending the list of Parisian failures in this exercise during the match. This is the third missed penalty in three matches with three different shooters.
“In the top three”
Much better in the game and more dangerous, they equalized straight away thanks to Illia Zabarnyi, alone in front of goal and served by the Ballon d’Or (1-1, 77th). Less than ten minutes later, Dembélé turned the match around with a strike from the edge of the area (2-1, 85th), before serving Torres for Désiré Doué (90th + 3, 3-1). Opposite, the Strasbourg side continue their bad patch with their third defeat in a row (Paris FC, Nice) and will be able to harbor regrets, given the number of opportunities.
Friday, Luis Enrique had planned things well, expecting “a difficult match, like the last three years”. “They are very young, but they have a lot of qualities, at a higher level than what you find at that age, in general. They will have a special mentality against us and it will be very difficult. But there is motivation for us: if we win, we will be in the top three,” he added. This is indeed the case, Paris even takes the lead with 14 points, tied with Monaco and one length ahead of Lille, which hosts Brest on Saturday evening.
