First things first before we move on to lesser talking points: there was no penalty awarded to PSG on Wednesday, but Neymar and Edinson Cavani took turns on direct free kicks. They also shared moments of slightly frigid tenderness, Cavani comforting Neymar after a terrible miss and Neymar belatedly arriving to congratulate Cavani on his superbly taken goal.
In many ways, Julian Draxler is the forgotten man at Paris Saint-Germain. With Neymar’s massive transfer fee, Kylian Mbappe’s incredible potential and Edinson Cavani’s missed penalty kicks, the German playmaker has started just two of six matches this season. Fortunately, someone remembered Draxler’s birthday.
On the back of Sunday’s Ligue 1 fiasco which saw Paris Saint-Germain beat a French opponent by only two goals, Edinson Cavani moved quickly to dismiss the simmering rumors of an irrevocable fallout between himself and new boy Neymar.
Let’s be honest, we’ve probably just witnessed the most calamitous weekend Paris Saint-Germain will suffer all season in France’s Ligue 1. No PSG player was able to get on the scoresheet in their match against Lyon on Sunday, but the Parisian club still managed to win 2-0 by forcing two own goals to maintain their perfect start to the season.
Paris Saint-Germain almost broke the internet on Friday by announcing a starting XI against Metz that took all of the world’s money to assemble, including Neymar ($263M), Kylian Mbappe ($220M), Edinson Cavani ($77M) and Julian Draxler ($48M). Metz, by comparison, turned to Newcastle United flop Emmanuel Riviere.
Remember those awful spelling tests growing up? The ones that seemed so pointless because everything has spellcheck these days? Well, maybe your teacher had a point; maybe those exercises weren’t so useless after all.
Four matches into the Ligue 1 season, Montpellier realized the club’s jerseys, both official and fan-bought, were produced with a typo on the team crest located on the left breast of the shirt. Montpellier was spelled with one ‘L’ instead of two, even though it's spelled correctly on the right side of the chest. Oof.
La Liga president Javier Tebas is not happy with PSG's handling of Financial Fair Play rules this summer. Could that be because PSG bought one of his league's most marketable stars, a player who was sure to be the face of the league in a few years' time, for an exhorbitant price and one of the giants of his league couldn't hang on to said young star? Is Javier Tevas extremely bitter about this?
AS Monaco is a bit of an enigma. A French club not actually in France, Monaco’s rebirth dating back to 2011 has taken the club from the bottom of Ligue 2 to the top of Ligue 1, from one extreme of the transfer market to the other.
Zinedine Zidane is now as famous a manager for Real Madrid as he was a player for the club and the France National Team. He is also infamous for ending his international career with a headbutt on Italy's Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final.
It has been over a decade since that incident, but it's clear it still weighs on Zidane's mind in terms of both what it means for his legacy and the example it sets for young fans. Of course, this is to be expected when you ram your head into another man's solar plexus with a few million people watching.
In an absolutely stunning revelation, UEFA announced Friday it has launched a financial fair play investigation into Paris Saint-Germain.