Points, Nantes already owed him a lot in this Ligue 1. On Saturday, Alban Lafont offered the Canaries a prestigious success against PSG (3-1), multiplying the parades against the Parisian stars, including a penalty saved in front of Neymar. With his feline look, the Nantes goalkeeper played the biggest. The one Antoine Kombouaré made his captain in April 2020 has silenced, since the start of the season, those who saw him as a doorman who was too irregular.
Facing Paris Saint-Germain, Lafont (23) repelled almost everything, in his particular style, with the dexterity of a cat, able to intervene in the feet of Messi (3rd and 8th), to push back Mbappé’s attempt (19th), Gueye’s close range recovery (27th), Neymar’s attempt (28th), Mbappé’s tumble (54th)…
The FC Nantes goalkeeper confirmed his pronounced taste for the face-to-face, with in particular this ability to lie down full length or to throw his opposite foot without giving any indication to the shooter. It is above all his speed of execution that has upset the Parisian stars, at least when the latter have not caught both feet in the carpet. What about the softly shot penalty by Neymar which he was able to seize, or this gross miss from Mbappé at close range …
Until the end, Alban Lafont watched over his people, like this headline in front of Draxler (84th) or this outing full of authority against Mbappé. In a boiling Beaujoire stadium, he was the boss, the guide of a band of hungry, willing and without the slightest inferiority complex. The armband transformed him, he turned a corner, he matured, as his trainer Antoine Kombouaré likes to remind him.
3 – 3 of the last 4 penalties saved in Ligue 1 – all teams combined – are the work of Alban Lafont. Wall. @FCNantes #FCNPSG pic.twitter.com/I99A8yyvbE
— OptaJean (@OptaJean) February 19, 2022
At the final whistle, he contented himself with a friendly tap to his defenders, before going to greet the PSG goalkeeper, Keylor Navas, who unlike him, did not necessarily have much to do but went to get three of them in his nets. The former Bleuet had given up on Euro Espoirs to help FC Nantes hold on through a double confrontation against Toulouse in the play-off. Today, he dreams of Europe.