Trophee des Champions: AS Monaco suffer heartbreaking late defeat vs. PSG
Despite producing a valiant performance against the mighty Paris Saint-Germain, Ousmane Dembele’s stoppage-time winner saw AS Monaco lose the Trophee des Champions in cruel fashion.
The Match
Returning to action after two weeks without playing, Adi Hutter chose a classy side for this colossal clash in Qatar, as captain Denis Zakaria was notably back in the line-up following his injury absence.
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PSG raced out of the blocks to make a fine start to proceedings and almost took an early lead through Desire Doue. But thankfully Philipp Kohn was on hand to deflect his strike onto the crossbar.
Luis Enrique’s men continued their dominance as the half wore on, with them posing a huge menace going forward. They were unable to break the deadlock, though, due to Kohn’s brilliance between the posts, who made further quality saves to deny Dembele twice.
Les Monegasques then came to life to end the opening stanza, as Maghnes Akliouche and Takumi Minamino fired off some decent attempts.
Monaco carried their positive momentum into the second period by constructing a couple of dangerous attacks before Eliesse Ben Seghir and Vanderson both came close on separate occasions.
Playing with impressive swagger and confidence, the 54-year-old manager introduced Breel Embolo and Lamine Camara to ensure his team maintained their energy and threat levels in their quest for glory.
With both teams pushing for a winner, unsuccessful efforts from Achraf Hakimi and Minamino arrived. In a tense ending, it would be PSG who reigned supreme, however, when Dembele struck at the death to propel his team to a dramatic Trophee des Champions triumph.
Hutter’s Debrief
“When you lose a match in the last minutes, the feeling that dominates is always disappointment. That’s what I feel, despite everything when you look at the whole match, Paris Saint-Germain deserved this victory. I’m still happy with what we did tonight, because we fought until the end to hang on to the penalty shootout,” lamented the Austrian tactician.
“We had some chances, but we also conceded a lot to PSG, especially on set pieces, where we were not well organised. I want to congratulate PSG on their title, even if we are obviously very disappointed by the defeat. We have to be honest, Paris had a lot more chances than us. But we had a game plan that the team tried to stick to, so I want to congratulate them for that. You can imagine that every player was sad in the locker room after losing in the last moments, because it was a big blow. We now have to raise our heads and think about the next match against Nantes. In any case, I think that tonight the spectators saw a very good match.”
Key Stats
By the numbers, while PSG held the ascendancy in terms of total shots (28 to 12), shots on target (10 to 5), shots inside the box (20 to 8), passes in the opposition half (255 to 156) and touches inside the box (46 to 17), the fact ASM had the edge in interceptions (16 to 9), blocks (10 to 2), clearances (24 to 21), saves made (9 to 5) and won aerial duels (11 to 9) illustrated the pattern of the game and ASM’s determination to stay in the contest.
Nantes Up Next
Following this crushing loss, Monaco will now quickly shift their focus to their upcoming Ligue 1 fixture with Nantes, which presents them with a tremendous opportunity to rebound strongly and get back to winning ways.