Christophe Galtier sucked up another painful Ligue 1 defeat for his Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) team on Sunday and told his 2022 World Cup stars they must find their focus again.
PSG began the year with a seven-point lead at the top of Ligue 1, but that has been clipped to three after defeats to Lens and now Rennes.
Rennes beat the Parisians 1-0 on Sunday.
Head coach Galtier will face scrutiny for such domestic losses, given the superstars at his disposal, and he knows he and the team must start to show their best again.
Galtier said: “I’m mainly disappointed with our performance. We didn’t create anything, we had very few favourable situations.
“We focused on having possession of the ball and we had far too many players who dropped back without having players high enough to secure the Rennes defensive line.”
PSG had only eight attempts on goal, their lowest total in a league game this season, and only one went on target.
The defeat was a third in their last four trips to Rennes in the league, with the Breton side firmly established as a bogey side for the capital giants.
Galtier pointed to issues with Lionel Messi and Neymar having no obvious targets when looking to move the ball forward.
That situation persisted when Kylian Mbappe came on as a substitute early in the second half, replacing the ineffective Hugo Etikike.
The former Lille, Saint-Etienne and Nice coach said there was an “urgent” need for PSG to get back on track.
“Obviously we’re going to have to find a lot more play and connection between the lines,” he said. “We knew we would have a difficult match, and we had it.
“The opposing goalkeeper was barely troubled. We need to find a lot more rhythm, intensity and technical relationships with one another.
“I’m not going to talk about worry, but there has to be awareness. We can find a thousand excuses, but the World Cup is over.
“Even if we have been dispersed for eight weeks, we need to find cohesion and rhythm in our game.”
