There is no hiding place in a French newspaper’s marks out of ten, and the PSG player ratings published by L’Équipe after Friday’s 2-1 defeat to AS Monaco are about as blunt a verdict as Paris Saint-Germain have had in years. Nine of the eleven starters were marked five or lower. Only two came away with anything resembling credit. For the back-to-back European champions, three games into a Ligue 1 season they have yet to win, that is a scoreline of its own.
The full L’Équipe PSG player ratings vs Monaco
The marks, as circulated from L’Équipe’s post-match verdict, read as follows:
- Matvey Safonov — 3/10
- Achraf Hakimi — 5/10
- Marquinhos — 5/10
- Willian Pacho — 4/10
- Warren Zaïre-Emery — 5/10
- Vitinha — 4/10
- João Neves — 4/10
- Fabián Ruiz — 5/10
- Maghnes Akliouche — 6/10
- Désiré Doué — 5/10
- Khvicha Kvaratskhelia — 6/10
Two sixes, five fives, three fours and a three. Nobody in red and blue was judged to have had a good evening — merely a passable one.
Safonov’s 3/10 is the headline, not the whole story
The goalkeeper takes the worst of it. Safonov has conceded six of the nine shots on target he has faced in this winless league run, and it has reopened a question Paris left unanswered in the window: whether they should have gone back into the market for a number one. As PSG Talk report, an approach for Zion Suzuki did not come off and there were no takers for Lucas Chevalier, so Luis Enrique began the campaign with the same goalkeeping department he finished the last one with. We looked at that decision and Safonov’s winless start earlier this week.
Pinning the season on him would be lazy, and the rest of the column says why. Pacho on 4/10, Vitinha on 4/10 and Neves on 4/10 is a defence and a midfield marked down together. A keeper beaten that often is usually a keeper being left exposed.
Kvaratskhelia and Akliouche the only two above water
That the two best marks went to Kvaratskhelia and to a summer arrival is the detail worth sitting with. Every one of Friday’s starters except Akliouche, signed from Monaco in the summer, was already at the club last season. Familiarity was supposed to be the advantage of a squad kept largely intact; three matches in, the newcomer is setting the standard. Kvaratskhelia, meanwhile, remains the most reliable attacking outlet in a side not scoring enough to cover its errors — L’Équipe’s own strongest XI for 2026/27 was built around that pair of certainties.
Seven points back, with Europe next
The wider picture is unfamiliar territory for Les Parisiens. Two draws and a defeat from three league games leaves PSG seven points behind Monaco, who lead the table, per Get French Football News. The Trophée des Champions went to Lens. The only win of the season so far is the UEFA Super Cup, 2-1 against Aston Villa in August — the second in the club’s history.
Luis Enrique is not pretending otherwise. “If we’re just talking about results, it’s been a disastrous start to the season,” he told a press conference on the eve of the Champions League opener, before adding that “there are things to improve, but we deserve more points.” His full assessment is here.
Paris are slow starters by habit — a squad built to peak in May rather than September, as PSG Talk put it — and that patience has been repaid before. But marks like these do not stay quiet. The Champions League defence begins on Wednesday against Yaya Touré’s Slovan Bratislava, and a set of ratings this cold is the sort of thing a team answers in one night, or carries for a month.
Sources: L’Équipe player ratings via PSG Talk; Luis Enrique quotes via Get French Football News.
