PSG’s climb up the table continued with a hard-fought 1-0 victory over Caen. The lone goal came fifteen minutes after the break with Guillaume Hoarau flicking-on a Jerome Rothen cross. In many ways this match typifies the difference between last season where this years club has the composure to sustain attacks and stay confident to press-forward. The leadership of Ludovic Giuly and Claude Makélélé is extremely apparent with both controlling respective sides of the pitch.
In-fact PSG could have scored numerous times as Ludovic Giuly led a brilliant attack that was unable to finish, none worse than a shocker miss by Guillaume Hoarau from a few meters out of a wide-open goal at the thirty-third. Superlatives do little to express how Ludo absolutely dictated the flow of the PSG attack and kept Caen on their heels. His influence is raising the game of all around him and in my opinion, from a attacking standpoint, was PSG’s man of the match.
Defensively the “Makélélé effect” continued as the squad continued to tighten and reduce scoring opportunities. While still far-from perfect, in combination of Mickaël Landreau’s inspired ‘keeping, the comedy of errors that plagued the squad last season has disappeared.
On the negative, once Ludo is off the pitch, attacking composure vacates the pitch. The play in the final ten minutes left a great deal to be desired and likely because they have had few experiences in this situation but this club needs to learn how to kill a match off. Their runs in the latter part ignored clock management and they gave Caen opportunities to score primarily because they didn’t know how to padlock the play. Finally I had to wonder what the intent is to leave Mateja Kežman as nothing more than a last minute substitution. There has been no question of his fitness and to leave him off the pitch seems a waste. Hopefully this will change next week against Nantes.
Match Details
PSG
Mickaël Landreau,Zoumana Camara,Sylvain Armand,Ceará,Mamadou Sakho (Sammy Traoré 80′),Stéphane Sessegnon,Claude Makélélé,Jérémy Clément,Ludovic Giuly (Fabrice Pancrate 79′),Jérôme Rothen,Guillaume Hoarau (Mateja Kežman 90′)
Substitutes not used:Edel Bete,Grégory Bourillon,Younousse Sankharé,Clément Chantome,
Caen
Vincent Plante,Jérémy Sorbon,Pablo Barzola,Nicolas Seube,Fahid Ben Khalfallah,Anthony Deroin,Benjamin Nivet,Rémi Gomis (Nicolas Florentin 70′),Juan Eduardo Eluchans (Julien Toudic 84′),Alexandre Raineau (Gregory Leca 52′),Steve Savidan,
Substitutes not used:Youssef Adnane,Karl Svensson,Alexis Thébaux,Reynald Lemaitre,
