Paris Saint-Germain started last week with an important win over Aston Villa, becoming just the third team to successfully defend the UEFA Super Cup trophy. However, they were then humbled on Sunday by RC Lens in the Trophée des Champions: Lens won 1-0 despite playing with 10 players for most of the match.
Trophée des Champions, the equivalent of the super cups in France, is played between the Ligue 1 champions and the Coupe de France champions (or between the champion and runner-up in the league in the case a team wins both titles, as it frequently happened with PSG). Last season, RC Lens won their first ever Coupe de France, and were also runner-ups in the French league, ahead of PSG in multiple moments of the season, and with controversial calendar changes that seemed to benefit PSG more.
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This time, PSG came with many of their World Cup players unavailable or with very little training (Ousmane Dembélé, Nuno Mendes, and Fabián Ruiz were left on the bench but played the second part, and Ruiz scored a goal ruled out by a tight VAR revision). Florian Thauvin scored at the 32nd minute for Lens, but minutes after Kylian Antonio was sent off by red card.
Lens held on and won their first Trophée Des Champions, breaking the norm: PSG had won the last four in a row and every single one since 2013 for the 2021 edition, when PSG lost to Lille.
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Paris Saint-Germain started last week with an important win over Aston Villa, becoming just the third team to successfully defend the UEFA Super Cup trophy. However, they were then humbled on Sunday by RC Lens in the Trophée des Champions: Lens won 1-0 despite playing with 10 players for most of the match.
Trophée des Champions, the equivalent of the super cups in France, is played between the Ligue 1 champions and the Coupe de France champions (or between the champion and runner-up in the league in the case a team wins both titles, as it frequently happened with PSG). Last season, RC Lens won their first ever Coupe de France, and were also runner-ups in the French league, ahead of PSG in multiple moments of the season, and with controversial calendar changes that seemed to benefit PSG more.
This time, PSG came with many of their World Cup players unavailable or with very little training (Ousmane Dembélé, Nuno Mendes, and Fabián Ruiz were left on the bench but played the second part, and Ruiz scored a goal ruled out by a tight VAR revision). Florian Thauvin scored at the 32nd minute for Lens, but minutes after Kylian Antonio was sent off by red card.
Lens held on and won their first Trophée Des Champions, breaking the norm: PSG had won the last four in a row and every single one since 2013 for the 2021 edition, when PSG lost to Lille.
