GUINGAMP, France: Ousmane Dembele kept up his remarkable form in front of goal with a double as Paris Saint-Germain took a big step toward qualifying for the last 16 of the Champions League with a 3-0 win over French rivals Brest in the first leg of their play-off tie on Tuesday.
PSG were overwhelming favorites coming into this tie against opponents who had never taken part in European competition before this season, and there seems little prospect of Brest recovering from this loss in next week’s second leg.
Vitinha opened the scoring for PSG at the Stade de Roudourou in Guingamp with a penalty just before the midway point in the first half, and Dembele swept in a second on the stroke of half-time before netting again on 66 minutes.
The French international forward now has 23 goals for the season, including 18 in 11 appearances over the last two months.
Indeed he has 10 goals in just the last four games, a run which includes a hat-trick against Brest in Ligue 1 only 10 days ago.
He is irresistible just now, and Luis Enrique’s side are unbeatable at the moment against French opponents, against whom they have not lost since last May.
“Ousmane is full of confidence just now. He was good in 2024 and he is even better in 2025,” said Luis Enrique.
The teams will meet again in the return leg of this knockout phase play-off tie next Wednesday in Paris, with the winners advancing to a last-16 showdown with either Liverpool or Barcelona.
Assuming they make it through, PSG will feel they are capable of beating either of those sides on current form, although Luis Enrique is taking nothing for granted.
“There is no chance we will treat the second leg like a training game,” said the Spaniard. “Our objective is to qualify for the last 16 by winning the return.”
Brest had not defeated the Parisians in any competition in 40 years, since January 1985, and have now lost 18 of the last 19 meetings between the teams.
They will have to try again next week to end that miserable run.
“It is disappointing and frustrating. I think 3-0 is harsh on us but PSG deserved to win,” said Brest coach Eric Roy. “Not many people will imagine us winning 4-0 at the Parc des Princes.”
Once again hosting a Champions League game an hour away from Brest itself in Guingamp, they nearly got lucky early on, when an attempted clearance by PSG goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma struck the face of forward Ludovic Ajorque and almost ricocheted in.
However, PSG were handed the chance to go ahead when a Dembele shot struck the arm of Pierre Lees-Melou inside the Brest box in the 17th minute.
The Bosnian referee had to come across to check the pitchside monitor before pointing to the spot, and Vitinha then stepped up to send goalkeeper Marco Bizot the wrong way with the penalty.
Brest did not let their heads go down and Abdallah Sima had two big chances to equalize, first being denied by Willian Pacho’s great recovery tackle and then heading against the far post from the resulting corner.
Achraf Hakimi almost scored an own goal too, but instead Paris struck again just before the break, majestically playing their way out of Brest’s press and breaking away.
Hakimi fed Dembele, who cut in from the right and beat the goalkeeper at his near post.
Brest then saw Sima hit a post at the start of the second half, but the visitors continued to look so dangerous.
Desire Doue had the ball in the net only for his effort to be ruled out for a tight offside in the build-up, while Dembele fired wide from a good position.
Dembele did then strike again almost midway through the second half, trying to feed Bradley Barcola and then seeing the ball break back to him before shooting past Bizot with the aid of a deflection.
Dembele stars again as PSG beat Brest in Champions League play-off first leg
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Dembele stars again as PSG beat Brest in Champions League play-off first leg
- The French international forward now has 23 goals for the season, including 18 in 11 appearances over the last two months
Cricket’s increasingly concentrated power and influence
- There seems to be a belief amongst those who wield power that India’s domestic market will never slow down and continue to sustain the sport globally
There appears to have been some mischief-making in the corridors of power which determine cricket broadcasting rights. At least this is the case as far as the all-important Indian market is concerned.
Rumors have been expressed in respected media channels that the current four-year deal between JioStar and the International Cricket Council is in jeopardy.
JioStar is the result of a merger in 2024 between Viacom18 and Disney Star, which had negotiated the original deal, signed in 2022. This was valued at $2.9 billion. The precise rumor was that JioStar does not wish to honor the last two years of the deal.
Such was the impact of the rumor that the ICC and JioStar released a joint statement on Dec. 11 which said that the media reports “do not reflect the position of either organization.
“The existing agreement between the ICC and JioStar remains fully in force, and JioStar continues as the ICC’s official media rights partner in India. Any suggestion that JioStar has withdrawn from the agreement is incorrect. JioStar is fully committed to honor its contractual obligations in letter and spirit.”
It can be argued that evidence of that commitment was demonstrated by the recent unveiling of a teaser advertisement for the men’s Twenty20 World Cup in early 2026, jointly hosted by India and Sri Lanka. The event ought to be a bonanza for advertisers, sponsors and marketers.
So, why, at this point, would rumors circulate about honoring the current media rights model? One possibility is that there is lingering suspicion that the $2.9-billion deal with Disney Star was over the odds.
It is understood that, at the bidding stage, Sony Pictures Networks had been the second-highest bidder at around half of the final sum and that Jio had bid significantly less than that figure.
It is difficult to keep track of the changing ownership patterns of companies which have held ICC media rights. Star Sports, the precursor of Disney Star, started its long-standing commercial relationship with the ICC in 2007, whilst its partnership with the Board of Control for Cricket in India began in 2011.
Indian Premier League broadcasting rights were secured in 2018. It seems that Star had become the preferred supplier and, perhaps, this led to an overreach in 2023 in order to ensure that this position was retained.
What seemed like an ever-growing market received a shock to its system in August. The Indian parliament passed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill. As discussed in my column of Sept. 11, the motivations for the bill are honorable.
It seeks to address the risks of addiction and financial ruin, along with the accompanying harm to mental health and possible suicide risk caused by compulsive playing, as well as opportunities for money laundering and threats to national security by illegal messaging.
The impact on real-money gaming platforms has been severe. They had become a vital cog in the engine driving televised cricket in India and beyond. Dream11, India’s largest fantasy sports platform, had featured on Team India’s shirt front, for both men and women, since 2023.
This prominent sponsorship disappeared with immediate effect and its business model had to pivot from paid contests to free-to-play. One piece of regulatory legislation exposed the inherent risk which cricket faces in basing a part of its financial underpinning on any sector which may be subject to significant governmental intervention.
Of course, none of this is new. Tobacco companies were once prominent sponsors of the game. When this was banned, cricket’s national boards moved onto other sectors, such as financial services. Sponsorship is not the main source of income for cricket — television is, largely from India.
It is well known that the ICC receives 80 percent of its income from India and that other countries rely on tours by the Indian team to generate domestic income. This level of dependency is not only risky but makes most of the rest of cricket vulnerable to what happens in India.
JioStar is owned by Reliance Industries, an industrial conglomerate which controls significant parts of India’s energy, telecommunications, retail and financial sectors. It also owns the Mumbai Indians in the IPL, MI Cape Town in South Africa, MI Emirates in ILT20, MI New York and MI London in The Hundred.
In the latter case, this represents a re-brand of The Oval Invincibles. Despite having a 49 percent stake in the franchise, its influence has been sufficient to effect the re-branding.
Reliance and its owners, the Ambani family, are heavily invested in cricket. A former senior executive of Disney Star and JioStar, Sanjog Gupta, is now chief executive of the ICC and will be very familiar with the terms of the current rights deal.
Jay Shah, former secretary of the BCCI and the current ICC chair is the son of India’s interior minister. The ICC and the BCCI are linked, more than ever before, by common interests and deeply personal connections at the governance levels of both cricket, politics and financial capital.
Whether the rumors about JioStar’s stance on the current rights deal is correct or not, it is known that the ICC has been preparing member boards for the prospect that funding distribution to them in the next cycle from 2028 could be 30 percent lower than in the current cycle.
JioStar has established such a powerful market position, akin to a monopoly, that the rumored default on the current deal may represent the opening salvos on negotiations for the next cycle.
In an ideal world, cricket’s governing body should not be beholden to a single broadcaster. Diversification of revenue streams across multiple broadcasters and streaming platforms in multiple countries would reduce the risk and dependency.
It seems unlikely to happen, as it requires the ICC leadership to decouple itself from the BCCI and India. A basic textbook on corporate strategy would not recommend that a global sport’s financial viability should be dependent on one country and a single powerful broadcaster.
However, that is the position in which cricket finds itself. There seems to be a belief amongst those who wield power in cricket that India’s domestic market will never slow down and continue to sustain the sport globally.
Add to that the continued growth and maturity of franchise leagues, with a high proportion of teams owned by Indian companies and individuals, the notion of anyone else having their hands on the levers of power is risible.
Little evidence exists to suggest that India’s dominance of cricket is not going to remain in place for some time to come. There is no obvious prospect of that position being used to institute structural and governance reform that addresses possible conflicts of interest and restricts power and influence.
In 1887, Lord Acton famously said: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Applied to cricket, this does not imply that financial corruption exists.
However, it should serve as a reminder that absolute power can corrupt the best of natures. On this issue, global cricket governance stands at a crossroads.
