Paris Saint-Germain concludes its 2023-2024 season in Lille on Saturday, during which it won the championship and the Champions Trophy in January. Two competitions in which PSG holds the title record with twelve victories in each of them. Against Lyon, the capital club can glean a fifteenth Coupe de France, having already held the record for victories in the competition ahead of Olympique de Marseille’s ten.
But one man, Parisian captain Marquinhos, risks entering the history of French football even further by winning a seventh Coupe de France, which would make him the absolute record holder. At least, that’s what we think if we assume that Marco Verratti has lifted the trophy six times between 2015 and 2021, as we can read on his Wikipedia and Transfermarkt pages.
A presence on the match sheet for the final is mandatory
But in reality, for the French Football Federation (FFF), which has organized the Coupe de France for more than a century, the one who plays today in the colors of Al-Arabi SC, in Qatar, has only won three times the competition. Because according to the FFF, a player can only be named winner if he appeared on the match sheet for the final.
For the French Cups won by PSG in 2015, 2017 and 2020, Marco Verratti is part of the list of winners. In 2015, he started in the victory (1-0) against Auxerre. Same thing two years later against Angers. Finally, against Saint-Étienne, in the middle of summer 2020, he came on in place of Leandro Paredes in the 75th minute.
Things are getting tougher regarding the other French Cups that PSG won when the Italian was at the club. In 2016, Verratti suffered a series of injuries and only played the third round against Wasquehal. On May 21, the day of the final against Marseille, he did not return. Same thing in 2018 when a tear in his adductor muscles kept him away from the field, including that of the Stade de France during the final against Petit Poucet des Herbiers. Latest example: the 2021 final, won by Paris against Monaco, without its midfielder, injured in the knee.
Marquinhos is in fact already the record holder
If we are to believe the 3F, Verratti has only won three Coupes de France and not six. This subtlety does not appear anywhere in the regulations of the Coupe de France. But could the federation, faced with this legal-football vagueness, soon remove the doubt?
This calculation can also be made for Presnel Kimpembe, Parisian during the titles of 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2021 but on the match sheet of only three of the finals. For his part, Marquinhos was on the bench against Auxerre in 2015, then started in the five other finals won since. Thus, the Brazilian is already, since the victory in 2021, the most successful player in the history of the Coupe de France with six trophies. He is ahead of Alain Roche, Domnique Barthenay, Thiago Silva and Angel Di Maria, winners of the competition five times.
