Paris Saint-Germain, the leaders, took an important step towards winning its eleventh title and breaking the record, by outright defeating its runner-up, Lens, 3-1, on Saturday, in the thirty-first stage of the French Football Championship.
Saint-Germain raised its score to 72 points, compared to 63 for Lance, who may lose the runner-up to Marseille, who are two points behind and meet Troyes on Sunday.
And in the event that the capital team is destined to be crowned, it will be unique in the record number of titles (11), which it currently shares with Saint-Etienne, with ten titles for each of them.
Lance, who did not lose any of his last seven matches (5 wins and two draws), started the match pressing his host and almost opened the scoring through Ghanaian Salis Abdel Samad, who fired the ball towards the goal, but Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma parried his attempt brilliantly after two minutes.
Then Saint-Germain entered the rhythm of the match, and then the turning point was when Abdel Samad was sent off for committing a mistake against Moroccan right-back Ashraf Hakimi (19).
Saint-Germain took advantage of the numerical shortage in the ranks of his opponent to open the scoring through Kylian Mbappe after exchanging the ball with the Portuguese midfielder Vitinha, before he hit it with the help of the post (31).
The goal is the twentieth for Mbappe this season, to lead the scorers’ ranking, by a goal difference from Lille Canadian striker Jonathan David.
Saint-Germain decided the outcome of the match when Vitenia added the second goal with a shot from 25 meters, scoring his first goal this season (37), before Argentine Lionel Messi added the third after a heel pass from Mbappe (40).
In the second half, Lens narrowed the gap through Polish Przemyslaw Frankowski from a penalty kick, following a handball from Spaniard Fabian Royce inside the area (60).
