Marked for Frédéric Michel
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Nobody could get near Ansu Fati
Successful dribbles: 35. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match3 Oct 2026
Whatever happens, Monaco do not lose
8 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Squad5 Oct 2026
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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Bradel Kiwa is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad5 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Lukás Hrádecký
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Folarin Balogun was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.25. 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.
Match3 Oct 2026
2‑2, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
There was no pressure on him and nowhere he had to be. Monaco lost a goal to a decision that took half a second and will be discussed all week.
Squad5 Oct 2026
A place in the month's best eleven for Frédéric Michel
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Frédéric Michel has come out of that comparison in the side, and Monaco have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 50. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match16 Sep 2026
The cup run ends for Monaco
1‑1 against Bourg-Peronnas, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
Squad21 Sep 2026
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.
Match19 Sep 2026
6 unbeaten for Monaco
Hard to beat is not the same as winning, but 6 matches without defeat is a foundation Monaco did not have in the autumn.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Frédéric Michel was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.01. 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.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Mohamed Bob misses from twelve yards
It was his to settle and he did not settle it. A long walk back to the halfway line, and a considerably longer week.
Loan watch21 Sep 2026
“I watch every Monaco game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Tours runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Squad21 Sep 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Sadibou Sané, and the manager let it.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad14 Sep 2026
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.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Nobody could get near Ansu Fati
Successful dribbles: 17. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Loan watch14 Sep 2026
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Monaco, and 0 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.
Player ratings14 Sep 2026
Marked 7.64. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
Match12 Sep 2026
A 1‑1 draw with Paris Saint-Germain leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Squad14 Sep 2026
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
Squad14 Sep 2026
One weekend, judged against everybody else's. Frédéric Michel has come out on top of it, and for most footballers a weekly award is the only silverware a career ever produces.
Squad14 Sep 2026
He wheeled away like a man who had been carrying it for months, because he had. Monaco have their signing off the mark and one press-conference question retired.
Market14 Sep 2026
The list is a quiet document with a loud meaning. Ritchy Valmé may talk to anybody who asks, and everybody at the club understands what that means.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
A brace, and Frédéric Michel takes the afternoon — 8.93
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Frédéric Michel provided it, and the 8.93 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Match5 Sep 2026
Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 88th, and RC Strasbourg spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
Market7 Sep 2026
Monaco say no — this time
The offer from Red Star 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.
Market7 Sep 2026
Frédéric Michel wants to know where this is going
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Monaco hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Tempers go at Monaco
Vanderson was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Bradel Kiwa is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at Monaco training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Frédéric Michel is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Match5 Sep 2026
It finished 3‑2, and it was Frédéric Michel’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Monaco.
The terraces7 Sep 2026
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad24 Aug 2026
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 15 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market24 Aug 2026
Mohamed Bob hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Monaco can pretend not to have heard.
Squad24 Aug 2026
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.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Folarin Balogun falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Nobody could get near Paul Pogba
Successful dribbles: 18. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market24 Aug 2026
Shakhtar are about to pick up the phone
A conversation is coming this week. Monaco will put a number on him, and from there it stops being football and becomes arithmetic.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
A mark of 7.11, and nobody in the ground would argue with it. He was involved in everything that mattered and most of what did not.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Romaric Etonde dropped after a run of poor form
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.
Match22 Aug 2026
The crowd waited for a goal that never came. FC Lorient defended in numbers and left with what they came for, and the two sides could be playing still without troubling a scorer.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market17 Aug 2026
Monaco get their man
The chase for Frédéric Michel ended with $14.4M changing hands and Tours out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
Squad17 Aug 2026
A fracture rules Mathys Plessis out for 23 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Monaco will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market17 Aug 2026
Nobody at the club will say out loud who this signing is for, which is how you know exactly who it is for. Illan Meslier has been brought in to take a shirt somebody is still wearing.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Illan Meslier gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Illan Meslier has just signed for Monaco, and for once the answer mattered.
Market17 Aug 2026
Monaco get their man
The chase for Naouirou Ahamada ended with $3.0M changing hands and AJ Auxerre out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
Market17 Aug 2026
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Tempers go at Monaco
Denis Zakaria was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
The ground is getting bigger
The plans are signed off at a capacity of 13028. Decisions like this are judged twenty years later, by people who were not in the room when they were taken.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Frédéric Michel falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
In brief
-
The terraces
The spotlight tightens on Illan Meslier
-
Boardroom
The Monaco board spend on the team
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Market17 Aug 2026
Tours sell their best player to Monaco
$14.4M is a serious amount of money and it does not play centre-forward. Everybody in the dressing room knows who used to be looked at when it went wrong.
Market17 Aug 2026
$660.0K — a new record at Tours
No footballer has ever cost this club more, and the number will be read out every time he misplaces a pass for the next two years.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Richard Poirier damages knee ligaments — 129 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 129 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 38. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market17 Aug 2026
Tours say no — this time
The offer from Paris FC for Rémy Simon 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.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
Supporters turn on the $14.4M sale of Frédéric Michel
He is going to Monaco, the club has $14.4M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Tempers go at Tours
Louis Prévost was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Boardroom17 Aug 2026
Graduation day at Tours
4 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
The terraces17 Aug 2026
Tours spend $660.0K on the signing the town wanted
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $660.0K for Yuliwes Bellache, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad10 Aug 2026
Richard Poirier damages knee ligaments — 137 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 137 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Market10 Aug 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market10 Aug 2026
LOSC Lille come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Tours did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market10 Aug 2026
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Tours hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Squad10 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Louis Prévost commits to Tours for another 4 years.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Tempers go at Tours
Louis Prévost was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.