Monaco 3-1 PSG: What if the virus is Christophe Galtier?

Is the nightmare ever going to end for PSG? Not by the look of it, one would say. Paris Saint-Germain visited Monaco on Saturday and returned home having suffered another embarrassing 3-1 loss in the Ligue 1, the fourth game overall they've lost since the start of the 2023 calendar year.

No matter how you try to paint the canvas of the current PSG, the only bright thing on it is the background because the ink is darker than the blackest tone you can ever dream of.

There is no positive angle from which you can look at Paris Saint-Germain these days. There is little (if any) hope of defeating Bayern Munich on Tuesday, let alone advancing past the Champions League Round of 16. And who knows how the Ligue 1 campaign will end with Olympique Marseille just five points behind PSG (and with another Classique scheduled for Feb. 26) and Monaco now just seven points off the leaders.

Obviously, the blow of losing to OM in their midweek affair hurt. Doing so in a knockout game and thus crashing out of the Coupe de France made things even worse. Losing the second game in a row, in the same week, against another giant vying for bragging rights in Monaco just dropped the entire hammer on Christophe Galtier and the fake posh PSG.

The news hit daylight just an hour before kick-off that some members of the PSG contingent in Monaco were suffering from a stomach bug. The virus ultimately left Fabian Ruiz out of Saturday's game. Everybody though that was actually good... until they saw this meeting develop on the actual pitch of the Stade Louis-II.

The lineup was dreadful on paper and the team was hopeless on the grass once the ball got rolling. A couple of titis in Pembele and Bitshiabu looked six or seven years away from turning pro. The former allowed a stupidly bad-measured third goal by Monaco on the verge of halftime with a blatant positioning error. The latter, well, ate a freaking sombrero and got stripped of the ball in the most bizarre and dumb of situations.

Less than four minutes into this thing, Aleksandr Golovin had already put Monaco up on the scoreboard. Less than 20, the massive screen at one end of the stadium was already reading 2-0, Monaco.

Had Donnarumma caught the virus, perhaps PSG would have lost by eight or nine goals instead of just two while allowing three and scoring one--thank God Warren Zaire-Emery is emerging as the lone bright development taking place in Paris. He scored the only Parisian goal on the day smelling a clear-cut chance while arriving from deep and putting the ball in the net as easily as it gets.

Galtier spoke after the game and said the second half was much better. I guess he was talking about it finishing 0-0 for both sides compared to the 3-1 from the first 45 minutes. Other than that, there wasn't much to like about it.

The coach decided that amid the absolute lack of warm bodies on Saturday, not only did he have to start a weird set of players, but also keep rotating them between different places while changing the shape and formation of his team endlessly. It was an absolute circus of a match by all parts involved in it.

At the end of the day, Presnel Kimpembe's return to the pitch after months on end recovering from his Achilles injury might be another positive considering what is coming next Tuesday. The presence of Verratti and Messi would have probably changed nothing, so they're better off resting than wasted.

Paris Saint-Germain is already out of contention for the French Cup. They have seen their Ligue 1 lead shrink to a tiny margin with another meeting with OM looming in the near future. And could be sent off the Champions League with a bad-enough result as soon as next Tuesday.

In other words: Galtier's days in the French capital might be numbered and the coach is at risk of finding himself packing his bags sooner than he expected. Anybody with the roster of PSG can (probably) win the league. With no chances at lifting the cup nor the Champions League, why keeping Galtier intoxicating the room any longer? The writing is on the wall, Christophe.