From a club going nowhere to the cusp of Ligue 1 title, Monaco set to complete thrilling rise

Ian Hawkey charts the rise of Monaco from middling Ligue 2 club to a European power set to end PSG's monopoly on French football.

Radamel Falcao, second left, is enjoying an impressive revival and has been integral to Monaco's free-scoring brand of football. Sebastien Nogier / EPA

Five years ago this week, they hit rock-bottom on the Rock of Monaco.

The principality, playground and tax-haven to many billionaires, had a football club going nowhere.

A little more than 4,500 roused themselves to attend the last home game of the season, and many wondered why they had bothered. Monaco lost 2-0 to Troyes. The result left them 10th in the division. France’s second division, Ligue 2.

As goalkeeper Danijel Subasic picked the ball out of his net in the echoey Stade Louis II for the second time, he would hardly have imagined he would be preparing to collect a championnat title five seasons later.

He and his teammates should do so Wednesday evening when Monaco – top of Ligue 1 and three points ahead of Paris Saint-Germain with a game in hand – play their penultimate match against Saint-Etienne.

The title is such a formality, given Monaco’s goal difference is 73, 17 more than PSG, that Subasic may even be allowed to get his name on the long 18-strong list of Monaco players who have scored this season.

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Subasic fancies himself an expert with a dead ball. He scored a free kick at the tail-end of that gloomy, mid-table Ligue 2 campaign. He had been one of the first recruits under the club’s then new owner, Dmitri Rybolovlev.

Rybolovlev, a Russian resident in Monte Carlo, signalled his intention to plough some of his personal wealth into not simply resurrecting the club, but making them a force in a league where the wealth of Qatari-funded PSG was turning Ligue 1 into a one-horse canter.

A bold plan, but one that would be revised considerably.

Subasic, along with such men as Valere Germain, Andrea Raggi and Nabil Dirar, will celebrate a second league triumph with Monaco on Wednesday or Sunday.

That quartet were there to win Ligue 2 in 2013 and, that summer, felt the whirlwind of ambition.

Rybolovlev wrote vast cheques to bring in guaranteed goals in the form of Radamel Falcao, creativity in James Rodriguez and Joao Moutinho. The rest of France mostly frowned, in spite of the quality arriving in their league.

At other clubs, resentment grew about Monaco’s fiscal advantages: because the territory is distinct from France, players there pay less tax.

Monaco finished second in their first season back in Ligue 1. Falcao suffered serious injury midway through it, and Rybolovlev experienced sudden constraints on his budget. Falcao left on loan, to ease the wage bill, Rodriguez was sold to Real Madrid.

Monaco downsized, and played some dreary football, cagey and low-scoring, but solid enough to establish themselves at next-best, behind PSG in France, and to reach the last eight of the Uefa Champions League.

Manager Leonardo Jardim took flak for the cautious tactics, but he had an eye on the longer plan.

Since last August, they have flourished around the experience of Subasic, a rejuvenated Falcao, Germain and the warrior defender Kamil Glik.

Once conservative, Monaco are now carefree. They reached 100 goals for the Ligue 1 campaign at 2-0 into their 4-0 win against Lille at the weekend.

In the Champions League, they pushed aside Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester City and Borussia Dortmund on their way to a losing semi-final against Juventus.

Europe enjoyed their youthful panache, the power and skill of teenager Kylian Mbappe, the whizz of the young full-backs, the midfield poise of Fabinho, Bernardo Silva and Thomas Lemar.

France has warmed to Monaco, too, not just for breaking the PSG monopoly but for providing a verve that the really big money of the recent past could not quite buy.

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