MONACO All change once again
Every season starts the same for Monaco as they sell their best, most marketable players, meaning that the job of Leonardo Jardim, according to the coach himself, is to “make omelettes with the eggs I'm given”. Each season he dons his chef’s hat, takes a group of new young recruits and successfully recreates a winning recipe.
In one fell swoop last summer he lost half his team – Kylian Mbappe, Bernardo Silva, Tiemoue Bakayoko, Valere Germain and Nabil Dirar – and it’s been the same old story in pre-season once again this year, with Thomas Lemar, Fabinho, Joao Moutinho, Rachid Ghezzal and Adama Diakhaby all bidding farewell to the millionaires’ paradise.
And so starts his next rebuilding project, trying to fuse a cadre of freshly arrived tyros into a collective worthy of the Champions League.
Of the club’s latest batch of recruits, only former CSKA Moscow playmaker Aleksandr Golovin has played at this level before. For the likes of Sofiane Diop, wingers Willem Geubbels and Samuel Grandsir, defensive midfielder Jean-Eudes Aholou and full-backs Antonio Barreca and Ronael Pierre-Gabriel it will be an entirely new ball game.
What is Jardim’s tactical philosophy?
Whether he uses a 4-2-3-1 or 4-4-2, the various sectors of his team always seem to be connected by an invisible thread. In attack or defensively, everyone is intense, disciplined and harmonious. A key part of his strategy is the use of ever-adventurous full-backs to create overloads out wide.
What must Monaco do better in this season’s Champions League?
Surprisingly for a coach who insists on meticulous defensive organisation, Monaco’s back line was an open door in the competition last term and they conceded 16 goals in six fixtures. They must tighten up, and their centre-back pairing of Jemerson and Kamil Glik will have to be much more watchful and uncompromising in this campaign.
What would constitute a successful campaign for Monaco?
In the last two tournaments they have alternated between the sublime and the ridiculous, reaching the semi-finals in 2017 and finishing rock bottom and winless in the group phase last time out. A place in the last 16 will probably keep everyone in the principality satisfied.