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A stellar season makes Monaco the billionaire's supermarket

(Gene Sweeney Jr/Getty Images)
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2nd November, 2017
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Monaco played their best game of the Champions League qualifying stage overnight, very much deserving the 1-1 draw they gained against group leading Turkish side Besiktas in Istanbul.

Besiktas can qualify for the last 16 with the right results in the next round.

Monaco languishes at the bottom of a qualifying group containing two other teams in FC Porto and RB Leipzig that very much do not qualify for the tag of European heavyweights.

Coming off last season’s semi-final loss to Juventus, a season where Monaco became many fan’s second team with their free-flowing attacking football, the draw for the group stage seemed to make qualification from Group G a bit of a formality for Monaco.

Two points from the first four rounds leave Monaco outside even Europa League consolation.

They will go back to Ligue One and the thankless task of chasing the Paris St Germain Globetrotters juggernaut that threatens to run away with the title Monaco won in style last season.

Bernardo Silva destroyed Manchester City in the last 16 of the Champions League last season, so City did what any smart billionaire would do and bought him.

Benjamin Mendy went with Silva, City cooling shelling out enough to make him the most expensive defender ever.
Tiemoue Bakayoko bossed the midfield all season, so Roman Abramovich took him to Chelsea.

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Monaco had made over 175 million euro from transfers over the summer before Kylian Mbappe went to PSG.

If Arsenal hadn’t been the roiling mess of intrigue they contrived to be throughout last season, with ‘Wenger Out’ and other drama, Thomas Lemar would have gone too.

Wonderful news for their bank balance with all that money. Not so great for their fans, or for the competitiveness of the European leagues.

The concentration of talent continues season after seaso. Monaco threw up a team which could challenge the billionaire club PSG in France, so billionaire clubs Europe wide banded together to tear them apart piece by piece.

French football is much poorer for it. And so is the Champions League.

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