Could there be a title race in France this year? That is the question after Paris Saint-Germain suffered its second defeat of 2023 on Sunday, giving its rivals hope at the halfway point of the season.
The question at the start of the season was whether PSG’s Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe, and Neymar could go the entire season undefeated in the league.
It went unbeaten in its first 16 games, but that streak came to an end on New Year’s Day when it faced its nearest rivals, Lens.
PSG were blown away in an intimidating atmosphere in France’s far north, losing 3-1, with Messi still on a post-World Cup break.
On Sunday it suffered a second straight defeat on the road, losing 1-0 at Champions League chasers Rennes despite fielding Messi, Mbappe and Neymar together for the first time since the World Cup.
Lens and Rennes are two of the best-run clubs in France, as well as two of the strongest teams at home, so defeating these opponents is not an embarrassment.
But it’s the manner in which PSG has been defeated that worries coach Christophe Galtier.
His team has yet to regain the form it had before the season was halted for the World Cup.
Now comes a crucial Champions League last-16 tie against Bayern Munich, with the first leg in Paris on February 14.
“If it is a matter of time, it is urgent. We could make a thousand excuses; our players had been dispersed all over the place for weeks. But the World Cup is over,” Galtier said after the game on Sunday.
It was only the third season since the Qatari takeover in 2011 that it did not win the title.
– Lens and Marseille pursue –
PSG is three points ahead of Lens and five points ahead of Marseille, which it still has to play away from home.
Lens, whose only league title came in 1998, has been outstanding this season under coach Franck Haise, winning 10 games in a row at its rocking Stade Bollaert, where packed crowds of 38,000 are larger than the town’s population.
Lens is a world away from the bright lights and glamour of Paris, steeped in the working-class tradition of a coal-mining region.
The club has a limited budget and was forced to sell several key players during the previous close season, but it is a shining example of what can be accomplished for other mid-level French clubs.
Meanwhile, Marseille has put a painful Champions League exit in early November behind them, winning all six league games since then.
In contrast to PSG, it played with a level of intensity and urgency in its weekend win over Lorient under Croatian coach Igor Tudor.
It already has more points than Marcelo Bielsa’s thrilling Marseille side did halfway through the 2014/15 season before collapsing.
“We have 42 points, but we are third,” Tudor explained.
“This means that two other teams are doing fantastic work. We’re halfway through a marathon, and we’ll see who can finish.” PSG’s season will ultimately be defined by what happens in Europe, and another Champions League exit in the last 16 against Bayern Munich a year after losing to Real Madrid at the same stage could be very costly for Galtier.
A deep run in Europe, on the other hand, may make them more likely to drop points in Ligue 1, as it did in 2021 when it reached the Champions League semi-finals but lost the domestic title to Lille.
