TOPS
The young Frenchman shone in the ASM midfield. Clearly with an offensive vocation, Maghnes Akliouche perfectly fulfilled his role as distributor. Even though he was positioned on the Monegasque right wing, he did not hesitate to drop out to get the ball at his feet. Precise in his transmissions throughout the match (48/56), the international with the Bleuets also showed a lot of composure in his decision-making. From the 10th minute, he led the ASM counter perfectly with Wissam Ben Yedder at his side. He uses his call perfectly to deceive the defense before adjusting Oukidja to make the break very early in this meeting.
As usual, the Russian was the metronome of this Rock team. Aleksandr Golovin seemed to always be one step ahead of his Metz opponents. He ensured the relay between the defense and his attackers and perfectly put his offensive partners into orbit. With a large volume of play, he was once again breathtaking in his precision and technical accuracy in his transmissions (83/89). He only struck once but he delivered a superb assist to Vanderson to take the entire opposing defense from behind (0-3, 16th). Even if he lost a few balls (11), he did not shy away from the task of recovering them as well (8 in total).
FLOPS
Always out of time, the Metz defenders never really got into their game. Faced with the saving runs of the Monegasques, Laszlo Bölöni’s players did not seem to have the slightest solution. They also paid dearly for it with three goals conceded in barely 16 minutes of play. Behind them, they can consider themselves lucky that the Rocher players favored the beauty of the gesture over efficiency because the bill would have could have been much heavier when returning to the locker room. Ditto in the second half where they took on water from all sides and never showed any reassuring sign against the Monegasque attacks.
The Monegasque captain failed to take advantage of the spaces left by his opponents. Although technically very comfortable, Wissam Ben Yedder had more difficulty finishing. Several times he found himself alone against the Metz goalkeeper but narrowly missed in the last move when he had just got rid of one or more defenders. Physically moved (2/6 duels won), he got frustrated and thus failed to target all his shots (0/4). Although his throws and calls were always accurate, he also lost a lot of balls (18 in total). Certainly his performance is far from ridiculous and he still played his important role at the point of this attack, but faced with such a weak defense, the French international was capable of doing much better.