Sunday 30 December 2012

PSG's year in lists: 2012 edition

And so my friends, we come to the end of 2012, another year in which Paris Saint-Germain failed to win any  trophies. Or many friends.

Nevertheless, it's been an entertaining 12 months in the French capital, with the arrival of Zlatan and Thiago Silva, a reasonably successful foray into the Champions League, and more crisis' than your average war-torn middle-eastern country.

So, without further ado, here's our farewell to 2012, the PSG Tourist end-of-year list. If you have any alternative suggestions, feel free to drop me a line or a tweet.

Player of the Year - Blaise Matuidi: After steadily improving throughout the second half of last season, Mr Elastic has been in outstanding form since the new campaign got underway. He's even added goalscoring to his game, and headed the only goal in our top-of-the-table clash with Lyon earlier this month. Hurrah for big bad Blaise.

Unsung hero of the year - Salvatore Sirigu: Matuidi used to be our unsung hero, but everyone's jumped on the Blaise bandwagon in the last couple of months. So instead I'm going to nominate Sirigu, partly because his consistent excellence seems to be take for granted these days, and partly because he was shamefully robbed of the Ligue 1 keeper of the year title last season. You could count the number of costly mistakes the Italian has made in the last 12 months on the fingers of one hand. Of a snake.

Flop of the year - Gregory van der Wiel: Turns out those people who told me that the Dutch international is more interested in fashion than football these days may have been onto something. Has rarely looked comfortable since his summer move from Ajax, and certainly doesn't look significantly better than Christophe Jallet.

Match of the year - Paris Saint-Germain 4-1 Dynamo Kiev: We'd waited a long time for Champions League football to return to the Parc-des-Princes, and our first taste of the Big Cup since 2005 could hardly have been much sweeter. With Marco Verratti to the fore, PSG were in irrisistable form as they blew away an (admitedly dire) Dinamo Kiev outfit. Zlatan opened the scoring from the spot, before goals from Thiago Silva and Alex made it 3-0 in a completely one-sided first half. Shell-shocked Dinamo pulled one back late on thanks to Miguel Veloso's free kick, before Javier Pastore's deflected shot put the icing on an extremely tasty cake. Honourable mention: Lyon 4-4 Paris Saint-Germain.

Shambolic fail of the year: Auxerre 1-1 Paris Saint-GermainSo many to choose from; does one plump for the failure to beat nine-men Rennes in November, or perhaps the 0-0 snoozefest down in Corsica which we played out with Ajaccio back in September. No, instead I'm going for our draw in Auxerre last season, a inexcusable result against a team heading for relegation. Had we been a bit more ruthless against struggling sides we would have almost certainly gone on to lift the title.

Goal of the year: Zlatan Ibrahimovic vs Marseille. Zlatan found some space to deftly volley home following a Maxwell corner. Taikwondo-tastic.

Quote of the year: "It's as if I did not exist in the eyes of PSG. Those guys, they pissed on me from a great height. They did not stop humiliating me and going behind my back. I read that one day I laughed at Nene who was locked in the toilet after the match against Arles-Avignon . I think that was the height of their idiocy!" - Peguy Luyindula takes aim and fires at the PSG hierarchy.

Zlatan quote of the year: “It’s true that I don’t know much about the players in Ligue 1 but for sure, they know who I am.” 18 goals later, it's fairly certain everyone in Ligue 1 knows who Zlatan Ibrahimovic is.

Random shit tattoos of the year: Zlatan again, but I'm not going to tell him.


Weedy body of the year - Poor little Clement Chantome: Basically I just wanted an excuse to post this amusing picture again:

Bonne Anneé everyone!

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