Against Paris FC, PSG came to present their six titles for 2025 but also their two new recruits for 2026. You already know them but you have not yet seen them this season or only in fits and starts. Désiré Doué and Ousmane Dembélé, the two “newbies”, ensured a precious victory against the timid neighbor, the PFC, who did not take a suitcase. Neither to come nor to leave.
The French champion preserves all his chances in the fight for the title, a priori a mano a mano with Pierre Sage’s Lens, more than a “truel” with Roberto De Zerbi’s OM, an unfathomable and crumbly team. Paris will test it this Thursday in Kuwait for already the first trophy of the year even if it is the lightest, the least coveted. In the meantime, Luis Enrique’s men, with four days of training, are back at a point from the Northerners in a waiting position.
Because PSG woke up a year ago, building its future successes on the comeback of Manchester City on January 22, memories distort a wonderful start to last year. It’s forgetting that the first two outings against Monaco and Saint-Étienne, two successes (1-0; 2-1), had offered a salty-sweet mixture of laborious but controlled style. Everyone has since believed that everything was already in place when the changeover from one year to the next took place. This is false and this PSG-PFC illustrated it, for a long time confined to the lack of technical accuracy of the Parisians. They were confronted throughout the first period with an attack-defense, a 5-4-1 set up to demoralize them, and they were not particularly brilliant in small spaces or the last choices, delaying when it was necessary to strike like João Neves served by Ousmane Dembélé (19th).
A new derby in 8 days
The match got heated when PFC decided to play in the second half, proving that it was always the best method to score. A raid by Alimani Gory, on which Illia Zabarnyi defended poorly without making a huge mistake, led to an equalizing penalty from Willem Geubbels (1-1, 51st). The PFC did not play to avoid leaving spaces, a boon that Ousmane Dembélé took advantage of for his first goal of the year, only his third of the season, the first since August. When we tell you that it’s a reinforcement for his team…
Moreover, the 2025 Ballon d’Or draws a link with the awakening of the force last January since he scored the first three goals of the year during the two initial successes. Fantasy that he shared with Désiré Doué this time as a sign of renewal.
The end of the match allowed Luis Enrique to manage the playing time as the infernal pace returned straight away and while Auteuil sang “Paris, it’s us!” » in a wise derby, on the pitch as well as behind the scenes (before hostile chants in Marseille), the PFC can always say that it avoided lightning with great discipline. It could be used to save himself during the next big posters that await him. Faced with more modest opponents, it will obviously be necessary to offer more play, which the promoted had undertaken in the carelessness of his rise. Since then, he has pressed the brake more than the accelerator.
The two teams will meet in the same place for a round of 16 of the Coupe de France on a Monday evening, after the Kuwaiti bracket. By then, PSG will perhaps have a new title. Living an endless day, he loves it.
