Why preseason is the perfect time for Paris Saint-Germain to experiment?

The World Cup concluded on Sunday, 19th July, with Spain defeating Argentina 1-0 in extra time courtesy of a strike by Ferran Torres. Spain was the dominant side on the day and deserved to take the trophy home.

Now that the World Cup is over, Les Parisiens can turn their attention to the transfer window and preseason. Luis Enrique's side has preseason games against Mallorca (5th August) and Man United (8th August) before the UEFA Super Cup final against Aston Villa on Wednesday 12th August. Their first league game is against Rennes on Sunday, 23rd August. Here at PSG Post, we discuss why the European champions should use this preseason as a time to experiment.

Players will be coming back late from the World Cup

15 PSG players represented their country at the World Cup. The two countries that had the most PSG players were Portugal and France. Portugal had four PSG players while Les Bleus had five. France went to the semi-final, so Ousmane Dembélé, Lucas Hernandez, Warren Zaire-Emery, Bradley Barcola, and Désiré Doué will return to training just before the season. Portugal got knocked out in the last 32, so expect Nuno Mendes, Joao Neves, and Vitinha to come back sooner. Fabian Ruiz will return the latest, as he was part of the Spain team that reached the World Cup final.

The club still need to do more business in the transfer window

The European champions have work to do this transfer window if they want to win the Champions League for a third consecutive time. The club has not signed any players this window aside from backup goalkeeper Alessandro Longoni, but is closing in on a deal for Lucas Digne. Les Parisiens have sold Gonçalo Ramos to AC Milan and Noham Kamara to Lyon. They have been linked to World Cup winner Ferran Torres from Barcelona, but that will be a difficult deal to do as Liverpool and Real Madrid are also linked to him.

The results don't matter

Preseason is a perfect time for the club to experiment, as the results will have no bearing on Ligue 1 or the Champions League. You can expect shock results as clubs will be at different stages of their fitness depending on how many games they have played in preseason. There have been several examples of this in previous seasons. In 2009, Man City beat Barcelona 1-0 in the Joan Gamper trophy. This result was significant at the time, as the Cityzens were in the early stages of the Sheikh Mansour project.

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