Paris Saint-Germain may be the richest and most glamorous club in France, but this season it wants to win any which way it can. While the public waits for Carlo Ancelotti to sprinkle a bit more stardust on the team, the new coach is keen to show his pragmatic side ahead of Sunday’s top-of-the-table clash with Montpellier (live, FOX Soccer Plus, 2:55 p.m. ET).
Ancelotti showed where his priorities lay with his flagship signing of the winter window. Italy’s defensive midfielder Thiago Motta set his stall out immediately on his debut against Evian two weeks ago, just days after signing from Internazionale. The stats were exemplary. Motta completed 88% of the passes he attempted and succeeded in all of his tackles. He also picked up his first yellow card for PSG in the 40th minute of that game, for a raking challenge on Olivier Sorlin.
“With all the kicks he gave out, he should take at least eight more (before the end of the season),” Evian midfielder Cédric Cambon snorted after the game. Nevertheless, Motta has fit perfectly, winning the respect of his new locker room in an instant and making PSG look even harder to break down.
It will need some of that spirit as well as the desired dazzle against Montpellier, whose title challenge is a near-miracle, whether it lasts or not. The southern club arrives at the Parc des Princes just a solitary point behind PSG but 10 clear of reigning champion Lille and Lyon, who won the title seven successive times between 2002 and 2008.
Montpellier’s win over Lyon in January that all but eliminated the eastern giant from the title race was not entirely unexpected in light of the latter’s injury problems. Yet, it was still remarkable given the enormous budgetary chasm between the two clubs. Even in a time of retrenchment, Lyon earns a sum 14 times greater from its shirt sponsorship deal with BetClic than the €500,000 ($657,000) Montpellier receives annually from its own contract with Sud de France Développment, which promotes regional businesses internationally.
Still, the team assembled by coach René Girard is an impressive one. It’s a mix of coveted youngsters like Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa, Younes Belhanda and the emerging Rémy Cabella, and the experience of Geoffrey Dernis and Marco Estrada, all topped off with the goals of the prolific Olivier Giroud.
They are unlikely to be intimidated by a packed-out, partisan stadium in Paris, with the squad containing few shrinking violets. This is no modest, super-polite, happy-to-be-here underdog. Goalkeeper Geoffroy Jourdren stoked the rivalry back in November, when he casually remarked that the PSG players “talk themselves up a bit.”
PSG captain Mamadou Sakho’s pithy response showed that Girard’s men have begun to get under Parisian skin. “I don’t care if they win or if they lose,” he snapped. “Apparently, some Montpellier players think they can judge us in saying that there are some players here who talk themselves up . . . OK, no worries. But me, I’m only concentrating on us. We’ll let people who prefer to express themselves in the newspapers do just that. Us, we’ll do what we know best, playing football and giving our best.”
Jourdren later apologized on RMC (Radio Monte Carlo), but it’s not the only time this season that Montpellier has put a few noses out of joint. After a defeat at Lyon in August, Girard tore into Michel Bastos and Miralem Pjanic in his post-match press conference. “We’ll see each other again," he fumed. “I believe there’s a return match. We’ll have the chance to set the clock to the right time.”
Montpellier certainly set the record straight result-wise in the return at La Mosson, but Girard and his coaching staff became involved in an unseemly scuffle with some Lyon players at full-time. “I have a lot of respect for Montpellier as a club, but absolutely none for the coach,” Bastos commented after the game. “It’s sad.” The club’s fitness coach, Nicolas Girard – René’s 33-year-old son – has since been banned from the touchline for four months (two suspended) for “physically threatening” Lisandro at the final whistle.
Nonetheless, Montpellier has kept grinding out results. The team is molded in the image of the spiky Girard, a no-nonsense defensive midfielder for Bordeaux and France in his playing days. He served the FFF (French Football Federation) for a decade in various roles, including assistant coach (during Euro 2000 and World Cup 2002) and under-21 boss before then-technical director Gérard Houllier fired him in 2008. The pair had always endured a frosty relationship. “When Houllier annoyed me, I just told him: 'f--- off.' And then I left,” he told So Foot magazine last month.
All this unfolds under the pugilistic leadership style of Ligue 1’s longest-serving president, Louis ‘Loulou’ Nicollin, who has been at the helm since 1974. About as far away from PSG’s Qatari ownership as one can imagine, Nicollin made his (by soccer standards) modest wealth via a successful waste disposal business. A frequent presence on the touchline, he is as blunt as PSG sporting director Leonardo is diplomatic, and never minces his words.
“Montpellier, champions of France?” Nicollin chuckled in autumn. “If I was Marseille, Paris, Lyon, Lille or Rennes, I’d stab myself in the a-- with a sausage! What an embarrassment it’d be for them.” It is clear that both president and club are relishing the prospect of making life uncomfortable for the champion-elect, even if PSG won 3-0 at La Mosson back in September with no little élan.
Much has changed in Paris since then - the replacement of Antoine Kombouaré with Ancelotti, and Javier Pastore’s nosedive in form (he scored twice in that win at La Mosson) to name but two. Yet if PSG has already proved something this season, it is that highly-paid individuals can be every bit as motivated and dogged as those fighting for a crust.
“We’re very proud to be where we are,” said Girard on Friday, “but we’re not going there as tourists.” Nor were Thiago Motta, Diego Lugano or arguably PSG’s standout signing, goalkeeper Salvatore Sirigu, mere tourists when they arrived in the capital. While the identity of the participants in this battle for the summit may surprise, the level of application, as well as aptitude, will be thoroughly appropriate for an occasion of high intensity.
