Paris Saint-Germain is dealing with main harm issues this night in opposition to FC Barcelona. With Ousmane Dembélé, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, and Désiré Doué all out, three of the staff’s 4 finest attacking gamers are lacking. That makes issues fairly difficult for Luis Enrique when planning his beginning eleven. And but, a teenager is more likely to be most well-liked over an costly star.
It’s anticipated that PSG’s coach will as soon as once more, as he did on the opening matchday in opposition to Atalanta Bergamo, depend on the simply 19-year-old Senny Mayulu to guide the assault in opposition to Barcelona, as a substitute of Gonçalo Ramos, who value round 65 million euros only a 12 months and a half in the past. However who is that this 19-year-old who’s pushing the Portuguese star to the bench in such an vital Champions League conflict in opposition to Barça?
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Mayulu joined PSG’s youth academy in the summertime of 2018 from the Académie de Soccer d’Epinay at simply twelve years outdated, and eventually made the leap to the skilled squad in January 2024. He’s thought-about certainly one of Paris’s most promising skills, although he lengthy stood within the shadow of the equally younger Warren Zaïre-Emery. It was solely within the final Ligue 1 season that Mayulu had his breakthrough, making 20 appearances and recording 4 objective contributions—a strong debut season. Since then, he has even overshadowed Zaïre-Emery as PSG’s most promising homegrown expertise.
📸 FRANCK FIFE – AFP or licensors
Mayulu stands 1.83 meters tall, is comparatively slim, and thus has the right construct for a striker. However the truth is, he’s a skilled midfielder. Since this 12 months’s Membership World Cup, coach Enrique has repeatedly performed him as a quantity 9, retraining him for a way more attacking position than the younger Frenchman was used to. However the swap paid off immediately on the Membership World Cup: On the opening matchday in opposition to Atlético Madrid, Enrique introduced Mayulu on ten minutes earlier than the tip, and simply moments later, the brand new striker scored PSG’s short-term 3-0 objective.
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And so it occurred that the expertise was even most well-liked within the beginning eleven on the primary Champions League matchday over the normally first-choice, big-money striker Ramos. Within the press convention after the CL match, Enrique defined his choice to start out Mayulu forward of Ramos as follows: “We thought that, given Atalanta’s excessive urgent, it could be higher to make use of a striker like Mayulu—a really cellular participant with many qualities, who can run in behind the protection, obtain the ball at his toes, and create a numerical benefit.”
What’s the motive for Enrique’s sudden obsession along with his new striker Mayulu? The PSG coach has a smooth spot for quantity nines who can even drop again into midfield. One of the best instance of that is Dembélé’s position final season. On this system, a participant like Ramos, who’s extra of a traditional penalty-box striker—much less technically expert and slower than Mayulu—tends to fall by the wayside.
So now the teenager will very doubtless get to start out from the start in opposition to Barcelona as properly. Maybe right this moment would be the day he scores his first objective within the new Champions League season. Within the 4-0 house win over Atalanta Bergamo, the 19-year-old was nonetheless left empty-handed.
Even in final season’s Champions League marketing campaign, the younger Frenchman was in a position to showcase his expertise. He topped himself because the third-youngest remaining goalscorer within the match’s historical past along with his objective to make it 5-0 within the remaining in opposition to Inter Milan.
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He’s now anticipated to construct on that, and right this moment’s match exhibits that Mayulu is certainly getting his probabilities behind Dembele & Co.—even on the expense of costly stars like Gonçalo Ramos.
This text was translated into English by Synthetic Intelligence.
📸 FRANCK FIFE – AFP or licensors