Around Europe: High-scoring Monaco playing with style worthy of Monte Carlo

Monaco's Radamel Falcao reacts after scoring. Eric Gaillard / Reuters

Monte Carlo wears its symbols of extravagance like a permanent tuxedo. From the yachts in its harbour to the stakes at the casino, this is a high-rise corner of Europe that prizes big numbers and acts like a magnet for high rollers.

In contrast to recent habits, the resident football club is also piling up handsome credit in the key currency of its game.

That is goals.

Monaco score more of them than anybody across the top leagues of Europe right now, and on Sunday night they will point their cannon in the direction of Paris Saint-Germain, the reigning French champions and the club for whom wealth has become a guaranteed ticket to success in Ligue 1 for the past five years.

Should Monaco beat PSG, or even take a point off them, they will start to look truly equipped and on target to overthrow the established hierarchy of the French top flight. The holders of the title sit third, three points and two places beneath the pretenders from the principality, with 17 fixtures to go.

If PSG can keep the southern sharpshooters from scoring at the Parc des Princes, then they will have achieved something very special. Not for four months have Monaco gone goalless in a Ligue 1 fixture, and they travel to Paris having registered three goals or more in seven of their last 10 league matches.

The splurge is startling, even to the Monaco manager.

“That is a lot more goals than I have seen in any team I have coached,” acknowledges Leonardo Jardim, in charge of the Monegasques for the past two and a half years.

This is the same Jardim who, in his first season in charge, suffered derision from within the French media for the crabby, low-scoring football his team played. “If I need an early night, I watch Monaco,” one pundit joked on air.

Jardim had been brought in from Sporting Clube de Portugal at a time when the club, after a period of big spending, suddenly downsized its budget and removed from the wage bill the formidable centre-forward Radamel Falcao and the creative James Rodriguez. The latter was sold to Real Madrid, the former loaned to Manchester United.

Jardim’s brief then was to bide time, find stability.

The transformation from then, the 2014/15 season, in which third place in Ligue 1 was achieved – as well as a place in the last eight of the Champions League – is dramatic.

Monaco struck 51 goals in their 38 league games in that campaign. They have 64 from their first 21 matches this season. In the space of a month between early October and the first week of November recorded six-goal tallies three times, against Nancy and Montpellier, and a 7-0 away win at Metz.

Reasons for the spree, which shows little sign of abating? The return and renaissance of Falcao is one.

After two seasons away, on loan at United and then at Chelsea, where the Colombian’s reputation as a finisher of world-class became tarnished amid persistent injuries, ‘El Tigre’ is baring his teeth again. He wears the captain’s armband for this rapacious Monaco, and has 12 goals in 11 starts this league season.

Valere Germain, Falcao’s preferred partner up front, has seven Ligue 1 goals – the same as the promising Thomas Lemar.

At 21, the winger Lemar is one of several younger players who give energy and future market value to a club with a renown for nurturing talent and selling it on at profit. Witness Anthony Martial, retailed to United for a small fortune 18 months ago.

Among the most coveted of the current crop are Bernardo Silva, the Portuguese attacking midfielder, 22, and the teenaged striker Kylian Mbappe.

Silva and Mbappe have chipped in with regular goals, as has hotshot supersub Guido Carrillo, an Argentine who tends to come off the bench and tunes in quickly to Monaco’s counter-attacking strategy.

“I believe in a team who develops ecologically,” Jardim said.

Right now his ecosystem seems hyper-fertile, and it is not only PSG who must beware its potency.

Next month Manchester City, frequently loose in defence, take on Monaco in the Uefa Champions League.

Player to Watch: Gerard Deulofeu

Gerard Deulofeu, 22, has touched down in Italy’s Serie A, on loan at AC Milan from Everton. He is intent, as he puts it, “on making up for lost time” with this latest opportunity to blossom into the star he was tipped to become from his mid-teens.

In at the deep end

The Spaniard has made a promising start. Deulofeu debuted for Milan soon after signing. It was no low-key fixture, away at Juventus in the Coppa Italia last Wednesday, on as a second-half substitute. Some eye-catching runs with the ball at his feet gave notice of his specialist skills in the 2-1 defeat. Enough to suggest he should have a part to play in Sunday’s San Siro league meeting with Udinese.

La Masia maverick

Deulofeu, short of stature but with jets in his heels, is from Catalonia. By the age of nine he was enrolled in the youth system of Barcelona – a fine place to start, especially for a boy with great technical gifts, and a relish for taking on opponents. He thrived operating on either wing, and achieved renown internationally, with successive European Under 19 championships with Spain. The second of those titles came in 2012 when he was named player of the tournament.

Pep’s protege

He had by then made his full Barcelona debut, at 17, in the fabled team managed by Pep Guardiola. But his prospects of elbowing his way to a permanent first XI place in a team including Lionel Messi, David Villa, Pedro or Alexis Sanchez were limited. After just two Primera Liga games in two seasons, Barca agreed he should be loaned out to gain experience. Everton snapped him up.

English education

His manager at Everton, the Spaniard Roberto Martinez, praised Deulofeu’s “enigmatic, match-winning potential”. He gave the teenager plenty of exposure, though seldom for 90 minutes at a time. The Premier League adventure fortified the diminutive Deulofeu and encouraged Sevilla to take him on loan the following season.

Ups and downs

At Sevilla, Deulofeu – still owned by Barcelona – did not persuade either his parent club nor much of Spain of his star quality. He had his moments, some of them dazzling, but he frustrated as often as he thrilled. “I have other young players with less of his talent, but more hunger,” then Sevilla manager Unai Emery told him.

Lost time

In 2015 after two years away on loan, Barcelona sold Deulofeu to Everton for €6 million (Dh23.5m). Martinez continued to value him, though his yield of goals – two in 26 Premier League games in 2015/16 – was low. Ronald Koeman, who succeeded Martinez, cooled on the player and by last month decided Deulofeu was surplus to his plans. Hence the move to Milan.

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