According to reports from the French media on Sunday morning, three PSG first team players are set to miss the Ligue 1 curtain raiser away to Rennes tonight.
With a lot of turnover during the summer transfer window, and the extended FIFA World Cup being quite so long as it was, the return to Ligue 1 football comes with a lot of excitement and anticipation from the PSG faithful.
One of the new signings who could well make his debut in this game is forward Ferran Torres, with the World Cup winner having signed from La Liga Champions FC Barcelona last week. Indeed so, as French journalist Fabrice Hawkins has reported that he will be in the squad for tonight’s game. He has also confirmed that Mika Godts is with the group, so we can assume the same for the Belgian winger.
There are a few players who will not be in the squad, however. As well as mentioning that Torres and Godts have been called up, Hawkins also mentioned that Senny Mayulu, Bradley Barcola and Ibrahim Mbaye are not in the squad for the game, with all three absences being a technical decision by manager Luis Enrique.
Interesting. Now, it is no great surprise that Barcola and Mbaye are left out. The same happened last week against RC Lens. But the exclusion of Mayulu is a bit of a surprise. He can feel a bit aggrieved, considering he had been praised for an excellent pre-season, and was not one of the players who returned late due to the World Cup.
Based on the comments from Enrique earlier this week, where he said there would have to be a couple of harsh exclusions from the squad, we can safely assume that there is no transfer saga revolving Mayulu, who will surely be an important part of the squad again this season, with PSG competing in three different competitions.
The 20-year old played 40 games last season, and totalled over 2000 minutes in doing so. Considering he was just a teenager throughout pretty much the entire campaign, that was pretty good going. He will be hoping for similar or even a bit better this time around. He was a late sub in both of the games against Aston Villa and Lens last week.
Ah well, let's hope he uses this setback as motivation to come back even stronger when he does return.
