PSG have issued an injury update on Achraf Hakimi and, for once this season, the news out of the Camp des Loges is better than the worst-case reading. The right-back was withdrawn during the first half of Sunday’s 1-0 win at Brest, and the club’s official bulletin, reported by PSG Talk, describes the problem as a minor muscle strain in his right thigh.
What PSG actually said
The update is short and, by the standards of club medical statements, unusually specific. Hakimi has a minor strain in the right thigh, will undergo treatment over the following two days, and is then expected to rejoin first-team training. There is no timeframe attached for a return to matches and no mention of a scan result, which is generally the shape of a bulletin a club puts out when it does not expect the story to run for long.
That matters because of how the injury looked in Brittany. Hakimi pulled up and came off inside the opening period of a game Paris were in the process of grinding out, and a first-half withdrawal for a 27-year-old wing-back who plays every minute he is given tends to be read as something serious. Get French Football News did not even issue him a rating for the night. The club’s own account is a good deal calmer than the pictures were.
The Zaire-Emery solution, again
Luis Enrique’s immediate fix at Brest was the one Paris have leaned on before. Fabian Ruiz came on and took up a midfield berth, with Warren Zaire-Emery shifting across to right-back. PSG Talk note that this was the go-to arrangement for long stretches of last season whenever Hakimi was unavailable, and it is the likeliest configuration again if the Morocco international is held back.
It is a workable answer rather than an equivalent one. Zaire-Emery is a midfielder filling in, and what Paris lose is the thing that makes their right side distinctive: an attacking full-back who functions as a third forward on the overlap. With Nuno Mendes pushing on from the opposite flank, the shape only really balances when both are on the pitch.
Why the timing is awkward
The obvious complication, as PSG Talk point out, is what comes next: Le Classique, away at Marseille. There is no game in the French calendar where a squad player deputising in an unfamiliar role is less welcome, and none where Hakimi’s experience counts for more. Nothing has been confirmed either way about his availability, and the expectation floated in the French coverage is that Paris err on the side of caution with a player they cannot afford to lose for a month over a fortnight’s impatience.
Given how the domestic season has gone, the temptation to rush him will be real. Five points from four Ligue 1 games is not the start back-to-back European champions had in mind, and Sunday’s win at Brest, secured by a Ferran Torres strike from 25 yards, was the first of the campaign. A back-to-back holder with one league win in four does not want to walk into the Velodrome with a patched-up defence.
The wider picture
Hakimi’s fitness has quietly become one of the load-bearing questions of PSG’s season. He is a vice-captain, one of only a handful of players in the squad who has been a constant through both Champions League triumphs, and the squad as currently constituted has no like-for-like understudy at right-back. Every summer signing went into midfield or attack.
For now, though, the update is what it is: a minor strain, two days of treatment, then back with the group. Hakimi has had far worse news than this. Whether Luis Enrique decides Marseille is the right afternoon to test it is a separate question entirely.
