Eighteen minutes in three matches
Nuno Mendes is suspended. Lucas Digne still did not make the squad.
PSG named 21 players on Friday morning for the visit of AS Monaco, the game that closes round three of Ligue 1. The left-back’s name is missing, and not because of any injury. Voices inside the club describe it as a straight football call from Luis Enrique.
Mendes had a clear reason to be absent, serving out the ban from his red card in the Champions Trophy loss to Lens. That should have handed Digne the shirt. It did not.
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Behind two players who do not play there
The numbers are ugly. An unused substitute against Aston Villa. An unused substitute at Rennes. Eighteen minutes at Lille. That is the France international’s entire season so far, with his direct competitor unavailable for chunks of it.
Luis Enrique keeps looking elsewhere. Lucas Hernandez got the job in Brittany, then Warren Zaïre-Emery was shifted over to the left against Lille, and the academy graduate may well do it again against Monaco.
Digne arrived this summer as cover for Mendes. He is now third choice behind two men who are not natural left-backs.
The doubts predate this week
His return to Paris a decade after his first spell drew raised eyebrows from the start. The World Cup semi-final against Spain sits in the background of all of it, the penalty he conceded on Lamine Yamal handing La Roja their way in. People were asking then whether a 33-year-old could still live at that altitude.
Somebody at the club briefed the press bluntly in recent days. “He has to fight and try to be better than Nuno because Nuno won’t play every match,” the source said, adding that Digne was “neither on holiday nor retired.”
The player himself shrugged it off at Thursday’s media day. “No, not at all. It’s an adjustment, and it takes a lot of things. If I had to worry after three games, that would be pretty sad really.”
PSG face Monaco at 21:05. He will watch it.
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