You shouldn’t have been late to launch this new season in the great soap opera of the
Ligue 1. A few months after its title of champion of France, Paris Saint-Germain was back at it again by raising the curtain of this new campaign on the pitch of Le Havre. An interesting match with a new cast in each camp.
While the Parisians launched their recruit Pacho in defense and their 16-year-old nugget Mbaye on the attack front, HAC experienced its first competitive match under the tutelage of Didier Digard.
A PSG still in the running-in phase
It didn’t take long to see how unbalanced this match was on paper. Very lively from the start, the Parisians quickly took possession of the ball before finding the opening on their first opportunity. A splendid collective movement with a victorious sequence of passes, Lee Kang-in taking advantage of a perfect shift from Gonçalo Ramos to find the back of the net with a nice curling shot (1-0, 3rd).
From then on, Paris, who had done the hardest part, tried to enter a management phase. That was without counting on the reaction of Le Havre. More consistent as the minutes went by, the Normans found the resources to equalize as soon as they returned from the locker room on an indirect free kick taken by Lloris (1-1, 48th).
A wake-up call that had the merit of waking up the Parisians. After a rather indecisive period where the balance of power turned into a ping-pong match, Luis Enrique turned everything around by bringing out his lethal weapons. Joao Neves, Ousmane Dembélé, Bradley Barcola and Marquinhos came on, one after the other, to force the decision.
The young Portuguese recruit showed his class, in bits and pieces, when the detonators blew the Le Havre lock. In less than 5 minutes, a victorious header from Dembélé (1-2, 85th), an impressive breakthrough from Barcola (1-3, 86th) and a penalty converted by Kolo Muani (1-4, 88th) allowed Paris to take off on these Normandy soils.
The only downside of the evening: the injury to Gonçalo Ramos, who was forced to give up his place at the start of the match and perhaps heralds a move in the transfer window in the next two weeks.
