Paris is perhaps the most productive city for player development in the world. But could you beat one of the richest, most global clubs in football using only players from the City of Lights? Martin Vert has been set that challenge.
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September is a difficult month. We play a PSG that are looking outrageous and unstoppable, a Marseille side that have splashed out to try and make up for a disappointing collapse at the end of last season, and a trip to the Santiago Bernabeu. But we first visit the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, where Jose Mourinho’s Roma are waiting for us.
The Champions League is a bit of a bonus for us. Completely unexpected, and we are completely out of our depth, but a chance to see the best in the world up close with no pressure to succeed. It’s so much a surprise that the board seem to have glitched into the dimensional void that hosts the Bauer, declaring themselves disappointed with my failure to reach the Third Qualifying Round, despite having skipped the qualifiers altogether. I know Steve’s behind it, I just can’t prove it.
Roma are, as expected, a magnificent team. It’s taken a few years, but Jose Mourinho has finally returned the side to the Champions League for the first time since 2017, with a bastard of a 5-3-2 that ensures an endless supply to Tammy Abraham and Lorenzo Lucca. They are solid, workmanlike, but occasionally prone to collapse, as in the semi-finals of last season’s Europa League where they lost 5-1. We can hope they have one of those nights, but we’re on our second string players and, again we’ll just enjoy the occasion.
We make a good showing, but we are pretty powerless to resist the Roma onslaught. I’m just starting to think we might make it to the break level when the defence gets pulled out of position and Abraham runs onto a through ball and fires home, leaving Fofana rooted to the spot. Minutes into the second half they double their lead, Mancini heading a corner against the post and just over the line. I decide there’s no point meekly accepting defeat, so we go more attacking and cause a few problems, but it leaves us open at the back and Justin Kluivert takes advantage in stoppage time to put some gloss on the scoreline.
Just to kick us while we’re down, we off to the Parc des Princes for our next game. I’m trying to be positive, but it’s difficult when you look at PSG’s ridiculous side. They ran away with the title last season, with a front three of Messi, Neymar and Jovane Cabral, with Diego Jota as a backup. But they didn’t get anywhere near the Champions League title they crave, which means hundreds of millions spent again. €166m to Barcelona to bring in Ansu Fati. Alongside him Karim Adeyemi and a Robert Lewandowski who, even though 36, is still ridiculously good. Calegari, Mykolenko and Marcos Acuna took the total spend up to €240m. It’s surely cheating. It has to be. 8 games. 8 wins. 23 goals. 2 conceded. There isn’t much point pretending we’re closing the gap, they’ve just extended it again. We’ll do our best.
It’s hard not to be proud of this team. We dig in, we get amongst them, and we fight for every single yard of ground. We don’t get forward much, but we frustrate them, and despite starting with Fati, Lewandowski and Adeyemi on the pitch, Poch is forced to also throw on Neymar and Messi. It’s too much pressure, and they finally break through and win a penalty, which the Brazilian dispatches. I switch it up to push forward more – there’s no point surrendering – but it leaves gaps and they quickly double their lead. Traore pulls one back, but Adeyemi finishes the game late on. It’s disappointing, but it’s the kind of disappointment we can be proud of.
Despite the result, we have a two-week international break to get ourselves back to our best. And there’s some exciting news. Ousmane Camara receives his first call-up to the U21 side, and Yahia Fofana is drafted into the senior side following the retirement of Hugo Lloris. The big man definitely deserves it, and hopefully it’ll go toward convincing him that he can achieve his goals with us.
Yesssssssss!
Marseille are up next, and they were in a strong position challenging for the Champions League right up until February last year, when it all went wrong and they collapsed away and missed out on Europe altogether. I don’t want to point out any fingers, but perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to question the Red Star project, Aliou Cisse? I don’t care about your AFCON win, wind your neck in and stay in your lane. Yeah, I want to win this one. Tattevin is out, but Mukelenge is back.
We really miss Tattevin, whose form would mean he’d probably have a couple, but we’re solid at the back which is a positive. Konrad de la Fuente is a livewire all game, and causes Sissoko problems for most of it, but Fofana is equal to him. For our part we have a couple of half chances and test Weverton a handful of times, but we aren’t clinical enough. But Marseille have been in good form and are one of the giants of French football, so a point a decent result.
We’re more or less straight out of the Velodrome and onto a plane to Madrid, such are the demands of European football. It’s a nice problem to have, and our coffers have filled massively, but we really don’t have the squad for these kinds of demands. It’ll be a changed squad once again, because, frankly, I’ll never learn. If the board wants success in Europe, Steve will have to give me a budget for two high-level XIs. Real have been spending money like, well, Real, and their biggest summer signing was the €50m purchase of Anel Ahmedhodzic, a player we know pretty well from his Lille days. We don’t hold out much hope, but we’ll enjoy it again.
It’s another 3-0 defeat, which seems to be our go-to European scoreline. Madrid start brightly, and Vinicius Jr opens the scoring after 12 minutes, turning home a cross from Alaba. We settle into our groove a little after that, and frustrate the hosts for an hour until Chris Attys makes the strange decision to punch away a cross that was already over the heads of Madrid’s players. Alaba score it, and as we push forward they put the game to bed.
We finish the month with a trip to Dijon. They are newly promoted and struggling, propping up the table and without a win so far. They have scored just five goals, and four of them have come from Roger Assale who we remember from our Ligue 2 days. It seems like a case of if we can stop him, we can stop Dijon. A win would be a nice way to see out the month, and a clean sheet, so we’re back to full strength minus injuries. 5th v 18th, this should be in the bag, right? (Martin forgot to screenshot his team before the match, but it was this team below).
In the bag it is! Roger Assale is indeed their only outlet, so I tell Massouema to stick to him like moss on a Mississippi tree stump and we just stifle him out of the game. I’m worried it’ll limit our creativity, but I reckon without Bilal Brahimi. He turns home after 15 minutes to give us the lead, and then dinks over the goalkeeper before the hour to double it. When Amadou Traore wins a penalty in stoppage time, there is only one man for the job, and he fires it into the top corner for his hat-trick.
It’s been a rough month, albeit with a high at the end. But then we expected it to be difficult. The Champions League is too much for us to take on at this stage, but having played all but one of our league rivals we are sitting pretty in the Europa League places. Ignoring Europe, November should be better, and as long as we can stay in touch with the top group by Christmas, I am confident we can put down a real run of form without European distractions.
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