Japan’s Takumi Minamino scored the only goal of the game as Monaco shocked reigning champions Paris Saint-Germain in Ligue 1 on Saturday, winning 1-0 in the principality.

The 30-year-old Japanese international star, once of Liverpool, struck just past the midway point in the second half at the Stade Louis II to inflict a second domestic defeat of the campaign on PSG.

Monaco held on through the closing stages, including seven minutes of stoppage time, after having former Paris defender Thilo Kehrer sent off in the 80th minute.

It is a surprise result with Monaco ending a run of three consecutive Ligue 1 losses which had seen them lose ground on PSG and the other sides at the top of the table.

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They are now provisionally up to sixth, seven points behind the capital side whose only other reverse in Ligue 1 so far this season came away to Marseille in September.

PSG remain top of the standings for now with 30 points from 14 games, but last season’s Champions League winners are just two points clear of nearest rivals Marseille and Lens and could lose their place at the summit later on Saturday.

“Usually I prefer to watch matches again and analyse them, but today it is easier. We were not precise enough and we made too many individual and collective mistakes,” said PSG coach Luis Enrique.

“Neither team played at a very high level, but they played better than us. It was without any doubt our worst match of the season.”

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Marseille, fresh from winning 2-1 at home to Newcastle United in the Champions League in midweek, can go first with a win against Toulouse later at the Velodrome.

Lens will also have the opportunity to leapfrog PSG by taking three points at Angers on Sunday.

Minamino controlled an Aleksandr Golovin cross before finishing past Lucas Chevalier to open the scoring and Monaco maintained their advantage even after German centre-back Kehrer saw red following a VAR check for a foul on Ibrahim Mbaye.

Paul Pogba made another brief cameo appearance off the bench for the hosts, a week after coming on for his first competitive appearance in over two years following a doping ban.

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PSG, having beaten Tottenham Hotspur 5-3 in the Champions League on Wednesday, were themselves far from full strength with Achraf Hakimi, Nuno Mendes and Desire Doue all missing.

In addition, Ballon d’Or winner Ousmane Dembele only managed just over half an hour as a substitute as he continues to build up fitness in what has been an injury-hit season so far.

The France forward was unable to have a decisive impact on proceedings and PSG have now already suffered as many Ligue 1 defeats as in the whole of each of the last two campaigns.

UK football chiefs on Friday unveiled details of their unopposed joint bid to host the Women’s World Cup in 2035, with 22 proposed stadiums listed in the official submission.

The bid team said the 48-nation finals would be the biggest single-sport event ever staged in the UK.

It would be the first World Cup played on British soil since the men’s finals in 1966, which were solely hosted by England.

“With 63 million people living within two hours of a proposed venue, it would be the most accessible tournament ever,” the bid team said in a statement.

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Sixteen of the stadiums on the shortlist are in England, including Manchester United’s proposed new 100,000-seater arena, with three in Wales, two in Scotland, and one in Northern Ireland, across 15 cities.

The final number of stadiums is expected to be whittled down to around 16.

A measure of the size of the event is that at the Qatar men’s World Cup in 2022, just eight stadiums were used.

FIFA confirmed later on Friday that the UK bid would be formally ratified at next year’s congress in Vancouver.

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The April gathering of football’s global governing body is also set to approve the joint candidature of the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Jamaica to stage the 2031 women’s World Cup.

“Hosting the FIFA Women’s World Cup would be a huge privilege for our four home nations,” the chief executives of the UK football associations  said on Friday.

“If we are successful, the 2035 tournament will be the biggest single-sport event held on UK soil with 4.5 million tickets available for fans.

“We are proud of the growth that we’ve driven in recent years across the women’s and girls’ game, but there is still so much more growth to come, and this event will play a key role in helping us deliver that.”

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Manchester United’s existing Old Trafford stadium has been included, but the bid team intend to put the club’s proposed new ground forward for consideration by FIFA once plans are confirmed.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that the bid showed the UK’s passion for football.

“The (England) Lionesses’ success has inspired girls across our country, and we’ll build on that momentum by welcoming millions of football fans from around the world to a tournament that will benefit communities and businesses in host cities up and down the UK,” he said.

England’s women’s team have won the past two European Championships and reached the final of the 2023 World Cup.
From 2031, the Women’s World Cup will be contested between 48 teams, up from 32.

The next Women’s World Cup will take place in Brazil in 2027.

Former Super Falcons head coach, Randy Waldrum, has questioned the Nigeria Football Federation’s (NFF) management of the monies that the world football governing body, FIFA, gave the federation for the team’s preparation for the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, reports allnigeriasoccer.com.

Waldrum’s team was eliminated from the championship in the second round by England through a penalty shootout. But the American alleged in a viral video on X that his team was handicapped by the NFF’s failure to make available the fund needed to properly prepare the side for the championship.

He alleged that the NFF received $960,000 from FIFA in October 2022 to support the Super Falcons’ preparations for the tournament.

He said: “I have a real close contact here in the US that is very connected with some of the board at FIFA. This person told me that in October, every country was given $960k from FIFA to prepare for the World, where is that money.

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“If Nigeria got that money why didn’t we have a camp in November? We went to Japan, we flew in and played the game and went home. Some of our players didn’t arrive until the morning before the game, I think five players who were going to start for me, arrived the night before the game and the game was 4:00pm and they traveled 16 hours on the plane. And we played Japan and then we went home. We wasted the last five days of that window to train.”

Waldrum, who affirmed that FIFA provides financial support to federations that are unable to afford business-class travel, with deductions made from their World Cup earnings.

According to him, the NFF had no justification for suboptimal logistics. “So, all these questions I have is where is this money? And the other thing I found out through my FIFA connections is that if countries don’t have the money to buy business class tickets for everybody, FIFA will fund the money and buy those tickets and just deduct it from the monies you get from FIFA after the World Cup.

“So there’s no excuse to say we didn’t have money to buy tickets and then we didn’t have camps. These are the kinds of things that the people of Nigeria don’t question. In the US, they would be questioned. If the US Soccer Federation was doing the same things, the US Soccer Federation would have to answer to it.”

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The coach also faulted the NFF for failing to maximise FIFA-approved staffing provisions, noting that while FIFA allows up to 22 technical staff members, Nigeria travelled with only about 11.

“So if FIFA will pay bonuses for up to 22 people, why didn’t we have 22 people? I didn’t have an analyst and I scout. Listen, the US has a scout in Europe, watching teams play in these exhibitions, in case they face them at the World Cup,” he explained.

“We didn’t even have scouts going with us to Australia. I didn’t even have anybody to scout games. If we got out of our group, I didn’t even have anybody to scout games in other groups. Everything I had to do was on videos and what I could pick up online.”