Presnel Kimpembe, an ideal culprit

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Like an air of March 2019. The circumstances are not the same as in the elimination against Manchester United and the outcome was not so crucial, but the coincidence is striking. While Paris Saint-Germain held a precious victory for a qualification for the knockout stages of the Champions League, Wednesday, November 3, the capital club was punished in added time by Leipzig (2-2) because of a penalty conceded by Presnel Kimpembe.

No hand this time, no defeat, but the VAR further dampened Parisian hopes by pointing to a manifest error on the part of the defender. On an opposing center, following a corner, the French international (25 caps) leaned his arm on the back of Christopher Nkunku to win the aerial duel at the far post. The fault is all the more obvious since it is not necessarily necessary in relation to the position of his vis-à-vis, even if the same Nkunku had beaten him with his head on the opening of the score (8th ). Above all, Presnel Kimpembe had already received a fairly lenient yellow card in the first period after cutting two opponents in the space of three seconds (32nd).

The threat of a red card and therefore of expulsion did not help him temper his commitment. Obviously, Dominik Szoboszlai did not need to be asked to equalize (90th + 2) and offer Leipzig his first point in this C1 campaign. In the other direction, Paris, which had led 2-1 for more than fifty minutes, lost two. Two precious points with a view to qualifying for the round of 16 which allowed Manchester City to recover first place in the group thanks to their victory against Bruges (4-1).

After the meeting, Mauricio Pochettino did not charge his defender and preferred to point out the lack of realism in the second period, which would have allowed his team to be safe: “It’s a shame. Bad luck. We had control, clearly, except at the start of the match. We had the possibility of killing the match afterwards. Football is also about efficiency at key moments”. Yet Kimpembe’s performances have been worrying since the start of the season.

In the evenings when Paris is undergoing, the spotlight remains on its hinge companion Marquinhos, a sort of irreproachable last bulwark. The comparison does not necessarily do the 2018 world champion a favor, who harasses and tries to weigh in the impact when the Brazilian exudes a studious serenity. In his last three appearances in C1, Kimpembe has a mediocre average of 3.5 / 10 in our notebooks.

This season is so far the weakest of his career in terms of balls recovered (4.3 per 90 minutes), aerial duels won (1 per 90 minutes) and in percentage of starts concluded without conceding a goal (18, 8%: 3/16). His monumental tackle against Lille on Burak Yilmaz is not yet a year old (December 21, 2020) that it already seems very distant. Sign of a change of dynamic, he is no longer necessarily holder with the France team. Didier Deschamps had done without him in the semifinals of the League of Nations against Belgium (3-2) when he had lined up a defense with three central (Koundé, Varane, Lu. Hernandez).

If he is not up to the performance he was able to achieve with the capital club, Presnel Kimpembe should not be held solely responsible for the defensive deficiencies in Paris. The ideal culprit is above all the symbol of a team as ambitious as it is fragile. He is part of a defensive line reorganized at 50% with the contribution of full-backs more attracted by attack than by defensive tasks (Achraf Hakimi and Nuno Mendes). The benchmarks are either vague or new, and the Parisian club gives the impression of being more resourceful than guided by a winning strategy. And when battles damage, soldiers are the first to fall.


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