Parisians are not such an undisputed leader.

One of the leagues with a stable sample is the French Ligue 1. Paris Saint-Germain leads again after 17 rounds, and it is difficult to count more intrigues. There are few interesting events, but they still exist.

First mistake PSG

Christophe Galtier’s wards were defeated at the most inconvenient moment for the hegemon of the national championship. The misfire occurred in the match of the 17th round of the championship against Lance, the second team in the table.

The Blood Golds, who recently played in Ligue 2, are enjoying their best season in over 20 years. Lens approached the meeting with the Parisians 7 points behind the leader. Due to the fact that under Galtier PSG starts from his main weakness – the fuckiness – it seemed that by the end of the game the gap would grow to 10 points.

But there were also arguments in favor of an outsider. The French giants are forced to do without the two main leaders of the attack – Lionel Messi and Neymar. The first moves away from the celebration of victory at the 2022 World Cup: he returned only today to the Paris Saint-Germain headquarters and will play in the 18th round. The second managed to play against Strasbourg, gave an assist, but received a red card. And in connection with the death of the Brazilian legend Pele, the forward of the Pentacampeons hastily flew home. Only Mbappé remained of the explosive trio.

Kilian opened someone else’s penalty area together with Hugo Ekitike, however, for the first time since November he went to the locker room with zero goals in Ligue 1.

This was enough for Lens to win a crushing 3-1. Now the “blood-gold” is four points behind the Parisians – this, of course, is unlikely to revive the intrigue in the global championship. But the fact remains: this is the French giant’s first defeat of the season in all tournaments. At least some touring players PSG I will definitely look at the table.

Marseille are not up to the title race

Even if in Ligue 1, the Provencals are confident. The combination with European competitions is not so easy for the team: playing on two fronts led to the fact that in October the wards of Igor Tudor had a streak of five matches without a win. IN Champions League Marseille only managed to beat Sporting and was left without Eurospring. But after relegation, the “blue-whites” scored 12 points in four meetings.

The autumn decline has turned into a strong lag compared to the more stable Lens and Paris Saint-Germain. Now the fight between the representatives of the top 3 will take place in a match format – both the Parisians and the “gold-blood” Marseille lost, the next face-to-face will be on February 26 – against PSG.

Meanwhile, Rennes and Monaco are already breathing behind their backs – both teams are now in great shape, it’s not worth giving them a chance to get into the top 3.

Golovin has woken up and pulls Monaco up

Periodically, the Russian midfielder gives a series of matches in which he scores points and brings victories to the Monegasques. The progress in performance was achieved mainly thanks to a change of position: Niko Kovacs also put the 26-year-old Russian on his left flank, and now Philippe Clement uses it in the same way.

This season, the streak has already extended to 5 matches in the French championship. Alexander scored against Angers, Toulouse, then assisted Marseille and Auxerre in goals, and recently scored the only goal in the match against Brest from outside the box. Long-range strikes as a strong feature of Golovin are also noted by the mentor:

I’m also happy with his performance. He has already tried that kind of shot this season and has what it takes to score goals like that. I hope he follows many of these goals because he has all the right qualities to do it!

Monaco has started a wave of success, with which they keep themselves in the European Cup zone. After a poor start, the Monegasques suffered defeat in eight games between September and October, helping them climb up from 16th to fifth place. Now the situation is similar: for 7 meetings – one defeat: from Marseille.

Lorient and Lille claim Monaco’s place: both are enough to surpass or equal the Monegasques in terms of points. The poignancy of the confrontation is added by the fact that Philippe Clement’s wards will meet with Lorient in the next round.

The same “red-whites” are protecting the error of “Marseilles” or “Rennes” to jump higher. You might get lucky in the 19th round, then Rennes will have to play PSG. Although this opportunity has yet to be used.

Longtime residents of Ligue 1 fight for survival

Angers didn’t have enough stars from the sky, but since the 2015/16 season they have been holding on in the elite division of the French league. Strasbourg have been playing at the top level since 2017, finishing sixth in the previous league. Nantes has been in Ligue 1 for almost 10 years. And all of them are now forced to fight not to be relegated to the second division.

The Canaries were unable to keep their main asset and did not even receive anything for it – Randal Kolo moved to Eintracht as a free agent. At the moment Nantes is in 15th place, but the gap from the relegation zone is only 2 points.

Strasbourg, which flared up a year earlier, has now simply returned to its usual positions, but even for an Alsatian team, penultimate place in the league is too much. There are no brilliant leaders in the team.

Angers has to deal with the fact that key players left last summer: Mohamed-Ali Cho was France’s leading young talent but now plays for Real Sociedad. Angelo Fulgini ended up at Mainz, Enzo Ebossa at Udinese. The result of that indulgence is the bottom line of the national championship. And even in such conditions the club wants to have time to sell the remaining assets, one of them is the Moroccan Azzedine Unahi.