🏏 Sun, 23 Aug 2026 17:15 CEST
Le Havre AC
vs
AS Monaco
3-4-2-1 vs 4-2-3-1
Substitutes
Substitutes
Match Preview
- This is the opening round of Ligue 1, and both Le Havre and Monaco are only now starting their campaigns. Of the 14 clubs already a game in, Marseille lead on three points with a goal difference of +4, with Lens, Lille and Lyon also on three. Both coaches have set up in 4-2-3-1, so this is a mirror match in which individual quality and the matchups in each zone will decide who controls the game.
- The double-pivot duel is the central battleground. Le Havre pair 23-year-old defensive midfielder Junior Mwanga, genuinely two-footed and a graduate of Bordeaux who logged 30-plus appearances at Strasbourg and passed through Nantes before returning here, with 22-year-old central midfielder Simon Ebonog, who came through PSG's youth setup before finishing his education in Le Havre's academy. Monaco counter with 191cm Denis Zakaria, who broke through across 146 games for Borussia Monchengladbach before spells at Juventus and Chelsea, and 22-year-old Lamine Camara, whose all-round game has drawn comparisons with Kante and Busquets.
- Monaco's creative hub is the number 10, Aleksandr Golovin. The 30-year-old attacking midfielder arrived from CSKA Moscow in 2018 for a club-record fee and has since extended his contract to 2029, driving the side with precise right-footed passing and set-piece delivery. Flanking him are 21-year-old Stanis Idumbo, who made his La Liga debut at Sevilla and scored his first goal against Barcelona, and academy product Mamadou Coulibaly, 22, who scored twice in a French U19 championship final.
- Le Havre's centre-back pairing mixes youth and mileage: Japan international Ayumu Seko alongside 35-year-old Vincent Sasso. Seko, 26, came through Cerezo Osaka and spent time at Grasshopper; nominally a centre-back, his technical quality means he is rated locally as a genuine dual-role option in midfield too, and at 185cm he combines duel-winning with long-range distribution off either foot. The 190cm Sasso brings a career spanning Nantes, Braga, Sheffield Wednesday and Dunkerque. Together they must contain Paris Brunner, the 186cm 20-year-old striker developed in Borussia Dortmund's academy.
- The full-back exchanges deserve close attention. Monaco's right-back Vanderson, a Brazil international signed from Gremio in 2022, is only 173cm but explosive, forever overlapping and taking players on. He meets Le Havre left-back Yanis Zouaoui, a 28-year-old Marseille youth product who climbed from lower-league Martigues to Ligue 1 in 2024 and delivers accurate crosses with his left foot. On the other flank, 23-year-old Timothee Pembele, back from a cruciate ligament injury and a PSG academy graduate comfortable at right-back, left-back or centre-back, is charged with handling Idumbo.
- Le Havre's attacking band features the striking figure of Micael Richardson, a 197cm midfielder. The 24-year-old, born in Morocco, has taken an unusual route through Stade de Reims, Fiorentina and Copenhagen before returning to the club. Monaco can answer with height of their own in 191cm Zakaria and 192cm goalkeeper Lukas Hradecky, which sets up crosses and set pieces as a genuine decider in both boxes.
- The goalkeeping matchup is a study in experience. Hradecky, 36, holds the record for the most Bundesliga appearances by a foreign goalkeeper with 323 games and 92 clean sheets, captained Bayer Leverkusen to an unbeaten league title and the DFB-Pokal, and was named best goalkeeper of the group stage at Euro 2020. Opposite him, Le Havre's Lionel Mpasi is a 32-year-old DR Congo international with 29 caps who came through PSG's academy and passed via Toulouse and Rodez before joining in the summer of 2025.
- Leading Le Havre's line is 33-year-old Mbwana Samatta, the first Tanzanian to play in Ligue 1 and captain of his country, a former Belgian league top scorer with Genk and the 2015 CAF African-based Player of the Year. His penalty-box instincts, honed at Aston Villa and Fenerbahce, will be tested by a centre-back pairing of Eric Dier, 32, who made 365 appearances across a decade at Tottenham and won a Bundesliga title with Bayern Munich, and 22-year-old Sadibou Sane, part of Senegal's 2023 U20 Africa Cup of Nations-winning squad.
- Le Havre also carry two Japanese players on the bench. Kaito Mizuta, 26, is a 182cm attacker who built his record in Germany with Straelen, Arminia Bielefeld and Rot-Weiss Essen before moving to France. Alongside him is 23-year-old centre-forward Sota Nakamura, just 168cm, who swept the Kanto university league's scoring, assist and MVP awards while at Meiji University and arrived via Sanfrecce Hiroshima; his high pressing and off-the-ball intelligence can change the rhythm of a game.
- Monaco's own bench carries real weight. Denmark striker Mika Biereth, 23, is a left-footed 187cm forward from Arsenal's academy who broke through at Sturm Graz, joined in January 2025 and once scored a Ligue 1 hat-trick inside eight minutes. Behind him sit 29-year-old centre-back Thilo Kehrer, who spent four seasons at PSG collecting multiple Ligue 1 titles, and 20-year-old central midfielder Ilane Toure, an academy graduate who represented France at the U20 World Cup.