Paris Saint-Germain spent the summer rebuilding almost everywhere except the one place that has cost them points. Three Ligue 1 games in, with the title defence still waiting on a first win, the PSG goalkeeper question is the one nobody at the Parc des Princes can put down.
Matvey Safonov has started the season badly, and the numbers are not kind. As PSG Talk have pointed out, the Russian has conceded six of the nine shots on target he has faced in the winless run — two each against Rennes, Lille and Monaco. Put another way: almost every clean effort that has reached him has ended up in the net.
Why PSG went into the season without a new goalkeeper
The context matters here. Lucas Chevalier arrived from Lille last summer for a significant fee and was supposed to be the long-term answer between the posts. It did not work out, and Safonov — brought in as cover — took the shirt and kept it. Per PSG Talk, Paris then tried and failed to sign Zion Suzuki this summer, and found no takers for Chevalier, which left the department exactly as it was twelve months ago.
One keeper did arrive. Alessandro Longoni came in on a free transfer and took the number 16 shirt, but a free signing is not an upgrade on the man in possession and nobody has pretended otherwise. Our breakdown of the full PSG squad for 2026/27 shows how the room now looks: three goalkeepers, no serious competition for the jersey, and no route back into the market until the winter.
The Monaco night that turned it into a story
Friday’s 2-1 defeat to Monaco is what moved this from murmur to headline. L’Equipe gave Safonov a 3 out of 10, the lowest mark on a sheet that spared almost nobody: Willian Pacho, Vitinha and Joao Neves all got 4, while Achraf Hakimi, Marquinhos, Warren Zaire-Emery, Fabian Ruiz and Desire Doue were handed 5. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Maghnes Akliouche, both on 6, were the only Parisians to emerge with any credit, as PSG Talk reported.
Ten of the eleven starters that night were at the club last season. Akliouche, the €50m arrival from Monaco, was the exception — and one of the two who came out of it well. Familiarity, in other words, is not the excuse.
Is the PSG goalkeeper really the problem?
Not on his own, no. Six goals from nine shots on target is a damning ratio, but three league games is a very small sample, and Paris have conceded exactly twice in each of them. That is a pattern of a defence leaking chances rather than a goalkeeper inventing them from nothing. The attack has not helped either: two 2-2 draws and a 2-1 loss is a team that cannot outscore its own mistakes.
Luis Enrique has always argued that this side is built to peak in May, not September, and the last two seasons handed him the receipts — the Champions League won in 2024/25 and retained in 2025/26, which makes Paris back-to-back holders. There is a trophy in the cabinet this season too, the 2026 UEFA Super Cup, taken 2-1 from Aston Villa. There is also a 1-0 Trophee des Champions defeat to Lens, and now this.
What happens next
In transfer terms, nothing until January. Enrique’s options are internal: stick with Safonov and back him to settle, or turn back to Chevalier, a keeper the club were reportedly willing to sell weeks ago. Neither is a clean solution, and both are the direct consequence of a window in which PSG moved more than €150m on Akliouche, Ferran Torres and Mika Godts while leaving the goalkeeping situation untouched.
Complacency was always going to be the enemy of a squad that has won everything. So far the struggle to shake it off has been entirely predictable — and it is showing up first in the one position where mistakes are permanent. For the background on the man who might yet reclaim the shirt, read our profile of who Lucas Chevalier is.
