Paris Saint-Germain floor out a tense 2-0 victory away to Le Havre on Sunday courtesy of strikes by Kylian Mbappe and Vitinha, after ‘keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma saw red early on.
Despite the two-goal win, PSG had to show great resilience to keep the hosts at bay and move four points clear of second-placed Nice in the table.
After going down to 10 men in the 10th minute, a fine Mbappe goal, his 15th in the league this season, gave the embattled visitors the lead, but the points were only wrapped up right at the end when Portuguese midfielder Vitinha doubled the score with one minute remaining of normal time.
Le Havre started brightly and won a series of early corners, one of which forced the visitors into a change when Fabian Ruiz injured his right shoulder defending a set-piece.
However, it was a long ball that finally broke down the Parisian defence as a clearance was not dealt with by Nordi Mukiele, allowing Josue Casimir to nip in before being abruptly halted by Donnarumma.
The Italian’s determined try to clear the ball resulted in him catching the Le Havre man very excessive on the shoulder outdoors the field and the referee was left with little alternative however to brandish a purple card.
Despite their numerical drawback and the lack of attacker Bradley Barcola, sacrificed for ‘keeper Arnau Tenas, it was PSG who opened the scoring.
Ousmane Dembele drilled a pass into his captain’s ft and Mbappe’s first contact took him contained in the defender and with a yard of area he improper-footed the goalie from contained in the D, scoring by way of the publish.
Chances got here at each ends simply previous to the hour mark with Mohamed Bayo capturing tamely at Tenas from a promising place, earlier than Dembele fired throughout aim with the ball brushing towards the far publish.
The hosts started to press and solely a nice save by Tenas within the sixty fourth minute and a significant sliding interception by Danilo Pereira three minutes later saved PSG’s lead intact.
But it was Dembele and PSG that had the very best probability to attain the second aim of the match within the seventieth minute, nevertheless a retreating Christopher Operi managed to foil the winger.
Tenas then got here to the league leaders rescue once more with a superb double save at his close to publish from Nabil Alioui with 12 minutes remaining.
Victory was lastly assured within the 89th minute when a PSG foray into Le Havre territory led to Vitinha making an attempt his luck from distance, with a big deflection inflicting the ball to loop over the helpless goalkeeper.
(This story has not been edited by News18 workers and is revealed from a syndicated information company feed – AFP)
