The handball players of Paris-Saint-Germain (PSG) won, Wednesday, June 2, their seventh French league title in a row thanks to their victory against Cesson-Rennes, 34 to 28, further establishing their national domination with this record series. With three points ahead, the Parisians can no longer be joined by Montpellier (MHB), who has only one game to play. This is their eighth title, along with that of 2013.
“A maximum of noise for the PSG, eighth time champion of France”, launched the announcer of the Glaz Arena of Cesson by asking the few hundred supporters authorized in the stands to stand up to celebrate the champions during the last thirty seconds. By winning their first twenty-two games of the season, Luka Karabatic’s teammates set a new benchmark, wiping Montpellier’s nineteen consecutive wins from the shelves in the 2011-2012 season, when the championship numbered fourteen. teams (one season with twenty-six games).
However, the Parisians had to wait until the beginning of June to be mathematically sacred. First, because Raul Gonzalez’s players still have a game to play due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but above all because Montpellier, their first pursuer, kept them high until the end. The suspense had taken hold in the wing with the double demonstration against MHB (36-32 and 31-28), which guaranteed the Parisians the advantage in direct clashes. He had been revived a little bit during the only Parisian defeat of the season against Nantes in Coubertin, in mid-April. But Montpellier also ran out of steam during this period.
Conquering the European title
“It was the most complicated title”, conceded the Parisian coach after the meeting. In this extended season of four games – the Starligue (the French men’s handball championship) has gone from fourteen to sixteen teams from 2020-2021 – PSG had to overcome some major obstacles, starting with the absences of certain players. SARS-CoV-2 positive in the fall, winter and spring.
Above all, the capital club had to spend two hundred and twenty-five days of its playing master, Nikola Karabatic, victim of a rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament of the right knee on October 17 in Ivry. Back on the pitch Sunday against Saint-Raphaël in Coubertin, he scored two goals Wednesday against Cesson and will have one more match to get back on track before the European Final 4. His absence, however, was perfectly compensated for by the recruitment of Dutch center-half Luc Steins, which gave a boost to the attacking game of the Parisians.
The Parisian workforce, with its swarm of French internationals (Nedim Remili, Mathieu Grébille, Luka Karabatic…) or foreigners (the Dane Mikkel Hansen, the Spaniard Ferrán Solé…) was above the rest. In full, freed from the pressure of the national title and in a positive dynamic after having released in the quarterfinals the European title holders Kiel, the Parisians will now tackle the Champions League, a clearly stated objective of the club at the time of the redemption by the Qataris in the summer of 2012 and which still resists them.
“We’re not going to have time to celebrate the title (…), we will have to get back to work ”, warned Gonzalez, while cries of joy and music echoed in the Parisian locker room. PSG have approached the last step of the continental coronation only once, losing in the final against Vardar Skopje in 2017, a loss of one goal.