Kylian Mbappé scored his 10th goal of the French league season, helping leaders Paris Saint Germain overcome a slow start to beat Brest 2-0.
With the win, PSG stayed 11 points ahead of Nice, which sits in second place.
The Parisian team continued to miss Lionel Messi, who has not been able to fully recover from the coronavirus. PSG’s malfunction was evident at the start of the match.
Irvin Cardona, forward for Brest, was extremely dangerous and forced goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma to make two good saves.
Mbappé’s excellent form has been enough for PSG not to pay dearly for their inadequacies this campaign. This time, he scored a combined shot that nested off a post from the left of the penalty area in the 32nd minute.
Midfielder Marco Verratti hit a post for PSG just after the break, and Portuguese left-back Nuno Mendes supplied fellow defender Thilo Kehrer for a volley on goal in the 53rd.
Brest, placed in 13th place, nevertheless finished as the strongest team on the pitch.
Earlier, Saint-Etienne’s campaign suffered another setback as they conceded a goal in stoppage time and lost 2-1 at home to Lens.
Last-place Saint-Etienne has won just two games and lost 12, falling four points behind Metz in 19th place.
Seko Fofana, with a brilliant shot in the fifth minute of injury time, gave Lens another late victory. On the previous date he beat Rennes with a goal at 88.
Fofana has become fond of late game-winning goals. In a match against Lille for the French Cup, he scored for the tie in the last seconds and for the victory in the penalty shootout.
Saint-Etienne has 10 league titles, one more than Paris Saint-Germain and Marseille. But in this disastrous year it has served him little to fire the coach during Claude Puel to the team that was one of the most attractive in Europe in the era of Michel Platini.
Puel’s replacement, Pascal Dupraz, saved Tolosa from relegation in 2017, and Saint-Etienne finds itself in an identical situation now.
This match started well for Les Verts, when midfielder Ryad Boudebouz opened the scoring after 38 minutes. Until substitute Florian Sotoca equalized at 77 with a header from a corner kick.
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