In one of the bumps of the 19th date of Ligue 1 in France, Paris Saint-Germain lost as a visitor 1-0 to Rennes and suffered its second consecutive defeat in that condition. The team of Lionel Messi He continues to be a pointer but now he only leads guard Lens by three points (47-44) and raised concerns about the low quality of football he displayed.
The match was played in heavy drizzle and biting cold. And Messi seemed to accuse him. The world champion had an apathetic performance, entered the game little, walked the field too much and never finished getting into the process. He only had two interesting appearances: a left-footed shot that local goalkeeper Steve Mandanda saved in the first half and a long pass to Kylian Mbappé that the formidable French striker, who came on in the second stage for Hugo Ekitike, wasted in front of the goal. Rennes. Before and after, little and nothing from the Rosario supercrack, like Neymar, who ended up playing on the wing trying to capture the desperate balls that PSG launched to try to achieve the tie.
Rennes’ goal came 20 minutes into the second half when Adrien Truffert beat Achraf Hakimi’s back on the right, fired a cross and Malian Hamari Traoré scored with a left-footed cross past goalkeeper Gigi Donnaruma. The defeat had an additional fact: It was the first time that PSG lost while Messi, Neymar and Mbappé were on the field for the French league. The unbeaten stretched to 14 games with 12 wins and two draws. With this victory, Rennes (35 points) shares fourth place with Monaco and is in the Europa League qualifying zone.
From the rest of the day, two wins stood out: Lille overwhelmed Troyes 5-1 and Monaco thrashed promoted Ajaccio 7-1. In that game, the center forward Wisim Ben Yedder stood out, scoring three goals in the first half (one from a penalty) and the Swiss son of Cameroonians Breel Embolo, who scored two in the half hour he played in the second stage. In the rest of the results, away from home, Clermont beat Angers 2-1 and Nantes beat Montpellier 3-0 and drew Reims and Nice 0-0 and Toulouse and Brest 1-1.