Romaric Etonde, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.90
A mark of 7.90 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Monaco this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Romaric Etonde has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
There is a particular helplessness in conceding 2 times before the twentieth minute. Paris FC tried to reorganise, Monaco did not allow it, and the result was written long before it was confirmed.
Player ratings16 Nov 2026
Vanderson was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.32. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Nobody at Monaco will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Monaco, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 10 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Monaco, and it is not being withdrawn.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Monaco this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Monaco and Le Havre AC in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Monaco are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
The offer from Clermont Foot for Ansu Fati was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Maghnes Akliouche. 2‑0 against RC Strasbourg, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Marked 8.45 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Mika Biereth is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 15 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
It is a small honour and it is not nothing: somebody watched every match in the division and decided that Mika Biereth was the best thing in any of them.
Nobody at Monaco is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
12 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Mika Biereth signs something — a contract at Monaco or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
“Nobody outside is coming to save us.” It was short, it was not comfortable, and by all accounts the Monaco squad were quieter afterwards than they had been all season.