PSG prepare for Monaco with order restored and European dominance in mind
Monaco are reigning Ligue 1 champions but this Sunday they welcome Paris Saint-Germain, whose monopoly is set to be emphatically restored.
Cast your mind back to May 17. Monaco were confirmed as Ligue 1 champions, Paris Saint-Germain had been dethroned by an exciting team of young upstarts, failing to win the title for the first time since 2012.
Back then you could have been forgiven for thinking that Ligue 1, a division PSG had run roughshod over for five years, was about to to become a bastion competitiveness.
Nice hung around in the title race for longer than most would have expected and Marseille and Lille were the subject of takeovers, generating hope they could again contend at the summit of French football.
Fast forward to the present day and, going into PSG's visit to Monaco, hopes of Ligue 1 being competitive for the long-term have been emphatically dashed.
PSG's response to losing the title and their Champions League last-16 humiliation at the hands of Barcelona was always going to be emphatic, but nobody could have predicted the business the capital club went on to pull off.
Beating Manchester City to the signing of Dani Alves from Juventus was impressive, but what followed was simply astonishing. PSG completed the most stunning transfer in history by acquiring Neymar - the architect of their Camp Nou downfall - from Barca in a world-record €222million move.
By contrast, Monaco's golden generation was picked apart by the Premier League before PSG took the crown jewel, luring Kylian Mbappe away in a loan deal with a view to a permanent move.
Fabino, Djibril Sidibe and Thomas Lemar remain at Monaco, but a squad robbed of the likes of Mbappe, Bernardo Silva, Benjamin Mendy and Tiemoue Bakayoko pales in comparison to that of PSG, whose star-studded forward line of Neymar, Mbappe and Edinson Cavani has fired them to 11 wins from their opening 13 league games and a six-point lead over Monaco, with Marseille and Montpellier the only opponents to offer any kind of threat to their unbeaten start.
1972 - Edinson Cavani is the 1st player to score 14 goals after 13 matchdays in Ligue 1 since Dick van Dijk with Nice in 1972/73 (14). Goleador. November 18, 2017
That winning feeling November 22, 2017
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