From July 16, 2019 to March 11, 2020, PSG will have experienced a funny season as always. This Thursday, he has just been crowned champion of France for the 9th time in its history, the 7th time in the last eight seasons. April 30!
Usually, he does not take as long to get his coronation but it seems that events independent of his good will have occurred. At 50, he offers himself his most baroque title, on a green carpet, even if the case remains indisputable: Paris was the strongest of the season and the most beautiful.
Mbappé, still a great goal scorer
Kylian Mbappé finishes top scorer of the season with a ratio of 18 goals in 20 games, which is both machine and genius when Angel Di Maria has regaled 14 assists in L 1, often off the foot, his caresses.
The financial power of PSG and its extraordinary talents have once again raged to the delight of the Ultras, who will once again have played a major role, from their sulkiness towards Neymar (at the start of the season) to their unreal rally in front the Parc des Princes, one evening behind closed doors in the 8th final return from the Champions League due to the coronavirus pandemic, already.
In an obvious symbol, history will remember that the first official goal of the 2019-2020 season went to Kylian Mbappé, on July 16 in Dresden at the DDV-Stadion against the Dynamo Dresden in a friendly in a starting composition with two intruders, behind and in front.
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Paris presented itself that day as follows: Areola (captain) - Meunier, Kehrer, Bernat, Kurzawa - Verratti, Herrera, Draxler - Sarabia, Jesé - Mbappé. Substitutes also provide information on deferred vacation returns and pending transfers. On the bench sit Innocent, Trapp, Bakker, Kouassi, Mbe Soh, Nsoki, Zagre, Aouchiche, Hemans Arday, Toufiqui, Yapi, Postolachi.
Neymar, an exciting soap opera
This is because the soap opera Neymar will have stirred all summer. When the Brazilian is not talked about by his injuries, it is because he wants to leave for Barcelona, eventually making the whole environment of PSG weary.
The Brazilian star remained uncontrollable all season, like his confinement that he chose to start in Bougival in the Yvelines before joining Rio and his vacation home in his country, a huge house in a park where he play the princes alone with his regular physical trainer, Ricardo Rosa. The number 10, by the way, is training well since it has lost weight.
Uncontrollable and decisive because he will finally have weighed with all his weight on the two knockout stages of the Champions League he has contested in and out and back, a first since his arrival at PSG in 2017.
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With two goals against Dortmund, one on February 18, the other on March 11, he kept alive and then qualified his team for the quarterfinals of the competition, without it being known if there will be a after. UEFA hopes to finish the race in August but no one yet knows if the health situation will allow it.
In the meantime, his association with Kylian Mbappé will once again have been the major act of the season, the French world champion carrying out the decisive action which brought the goal of the match to Dortmund. Victim of angina on the return and replacement, his conservation work will have been useful during the last stressful minutes.
Dortmund, qualification and release
This PSG-Dortmund of March 11 in camera, the last match played to date by the formation of Thomas Tuchel, remains a UFO in the history of PSG, faithful to its legend. In 50 years, this meeting will still be remembered, with the beating of the Parisians raised against the double scorer of the outward leg, Erling Haaland, and the 4,000 supporters massed in a way that is both brilliant but completely irresponsible outside, with the blessing of the Paris Prefecture of Police.
That evening, it was believed, by diving back into the images, that PSG had won the Champions League. It is not the case but there is that. In any case, a liberation from having finally reached the quarter-finals of the competition after three successive failures, each more pitiful than the last, from the remount of Barcelona (2017) to the surreal penalty of Manchester United (2019), one evening where Gianluigi Buffon had forgotten his hands and Thilo Kehrer his head. Unfortunately, he had kept his feet.
Tuchel, a bit lost in his research
In the game, this PSG will leave an uncertain trace with a sometimes bleak start to the season, hampered by Mbappé's early injury on August 25 against Toulouse. The world champion will miss until September 28 in Bordeaux, where he finally enters but keeps his discomfort in the thigh. Still replacing in Bruges in the Champions League on October 22, he offered a crazy recital by entering with a hat-trick and an assist.
His upset relationship with his coach has also punctuated the season. Thomas Tuchel in year 2 of his mandate will not have shown his ability to know how to manage stars or to really improve his team. He often seemed helpless, without solutions, lost in his research. He remains a skillful communicator but he no longer has Antero Henrique, the king of backstage confusion, in front of him.
Leonardo, a remarkable comeback
The other change of the season, with the return to the foreground of Neymar and his magical association with Mbappé, will have been the comeback of Leonardo to the post of sports director. The Brazilian brought order to the Parisian house, pissed off Neymar in front of everyone.
He monitors with his assistant, Angelo Castellazzi, Tuchel's daily work at the club's training center, the Camp des Loges. Leo will not be able to do everything, with a power sometimes fading like the successive parties of the group to celebrate the birthdays of Neymar, Edinson Cavani or Di Maria. As always, the club fed the extrasportive column, with an overpowered Neymar, or a president, Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, now referred to Swiss justice.
Cavani, a 200th goal and a farewell?
At PSG, a season never takes place like elsewhere, it is the atavism of the club, which is why one party venerates it when others mock it. But he likes to give the stick to be beaten. But life is well made: it is also this season that Edinson Cavani, also confined to his home in Uruguay, will have crossed the symbolic bar of 200 goals, bringing his record for top scorer in club history to a total that only Mbappé could one day threaten.
PODCAST. Edinson Cavani, top scorer in PSG history: the journey of an anti-star
Thanks to an aborted transfer to Atlético de Madrid, El Matador was able to cross this threshold on February 23, 2020 against Bordeaux at the Parc des Princes. It was a time when football was played and what is more in front of people gathered together, nearly 50,000 in a stadium. It was yesterday but it already seems to have been stored in the limbo of our memories as this time had not existed. Cavani is at the end of the contract on June 30th. He may never replay with PSG. The past is blurred, the future uncertain. These are our lives now.
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