Ten days before the start of the knockout stages of the Champions League, Lille and Parisians meet on Sunday February 6 (8:45 p.m.) on the lawn of the Pierre Mauroy stadium for the 23rd day of Ligue 1. For the players of Mauricio Pochettino , this is the penultimate match before hosting Real Madrid (February 15). The Mastiffs will travel to Chelsea a week later (February 22). This match between the last two champions of France therefore takes on the appearance of a dress rehearsal.
If Paris enjoys a large lead in the L1 standings with eleven points more than Nice, its runner-up, the players of the capital must recover after an elimination in the Coupe de France against these same Niçois. The Collectif Ultras Paris, the main group of PSG supporters, expressed its annoyance on social networks after this new setback. A good result would therefore be more appreciated on the level of the morale of the troops than on a purely accounting aspect.
OUR PATIENCE HAS ITS LIMITS…#FED UP
– Collective Ultras Paris (@Co_Ultras_Paris) February 1, 2022
Lille also remain on a poor performance. Defeated in Brest, during the last day of the Championship, the Mastiffs lost their bite. Yet quite dominating, they were unable to find the fault and showed signs of frustration. Burak Yilmaz was the catalyst for this tension in Lille when he got angry with his coach when he left his place to Hatem Ben Arfa.
Eliminated from the Coupe de France, the Lille residents had two weeks to ease the tension, including a three-day internship in Alicante in Spain. “A good mix of work and team building” , commented Jocelyn Gourvennec at a press conference on Friday. The batteries recharged, his players attack a crucial period of the season. Ranked eleventh, three points from fourth place, the Mastiffs are still in the race for the Championship podium and in C1. A competition that the Lille coach knows well, he who reached the semi-finals with Nantes in 1995.
We are not positioned where we want in the standings but we know that it is very tight. The deadlines are extraordinary to play, they are great challenges and we know how to thwart the predictions.
Pochettino will have to do without Idrissa Gueye and Abdou Diallo who will play in parallel the CAN final with Senegal on Sunday (8 p.m.). Georginio Wijnaldum is already forfeited and should be joined fairly quickly by Neymar and Sergio Ramos. But the Parisian technician can count on the return of Achraf Hakimi, Marquinhos, Angel Di Maria and Keylor Navas, returned from selection in great shape. His team should look like the one that will host Real Madrid in ten days (first leg on February 15, return on March 9), with the exception of Neymar who could return before this first leg.
Some feedback from today’s training pic.twitter.com/Jc9UXw23rH
— Paris Saint Germain (@PSG_inside) February 3, 2022
Opposite, Lille has almost no absentees and it is possible that the composition of Jocelyn Gourvennec on Sunday will be reproduced identically at Stamford Bridge in a little over two weeks. But the Breton must reorganize his team after the departures of Reinildo (Atlético de Madrid) and Jonathan Ikoné (Fiorentina) in the winter transfer window. New signings Edon Zhegrova and Hatem Ben Arfa could also enter the equation.
The 22 players will find a full Pierre Mauroy stadium after the removal of the gauges, for a match which promises to be undecided if we are to believe the latest confrontations. In the first leg, the Parisians won on the wire thanks to a goal from Di Maria at the end of the match. The Lille, who had opened the scoring, thought, until the equalization of Marquinhos, to hold a second victory in a row against PSG after their success in the Champions Trophy.
The last three games between the two clubs have ended with a small gap of one goal on the scoreboard. The difference will perhaps be made thanks to two of the best scorers in the Championship. Jonathan David, already the author of twelve goals in Ligue 1 this season, will be keen to do it again after his achievement in the first leg. It was he who scored Lille’s last two goals against Paris in Ligue 1. Kylian Mbappé, ten goals on the clock this season, had missed the first leg but has already shaken the nets of the Dogues four times in the Parisian jersey. He also knows that Lille is more fragile defensively this year with already thirty goals conceded in twenty-two games, against twenty-three over the whole of last season.