PSG should win the title but will Marseille keep up their challenge and will Monaco thrive under Robert Moreno?
By Adam White and Eric Devin for Get French
Football News
The first half of the Ligue 1 season proved two things: that the title will remain ensconced at the Parc des Princes and that nothing else is certain. Although Parisian noses have been bloodied more than was expected – PSG lost three of their first 12 games, having last season gone undefeated until February – Thomas Tuchel’s side go into the second half of the season with a seven-point lead at the top of the table. Behind them, however, there are many questions to be answered.
The first of them centres on Marseille. Having gone eight games without a defeat, André Villas-Boas’s team sit second in the league. This is a vast improvement on last season, when Rudi Garcia’s reign disintegrated slowly. The end of the off-key PSG tribute act unfortunately titled “the champions project” was signalled by the departures of Mario Balotelli, Adil Rami and Luiz Gustavo last summer. Gustavo had quickly become a cult hero as the club reached the Europa League final in 2018 and Balotelli’s goals guided them to a fifth-place finish last season, but these players represented the expensive, ageing signings of an era when hype and past glories were prioritised over a coherent transfer policy.