Paris Saint-Germain has a particularly unfortunate start to the new season. Three days after the 1-0 defeat against RC Lens a 0-1 defeat against rival Olympique Marseille followed. As a result, PSG is still empty-handed in the Ligue 1 after two games. It was an eventful edition of le ClassiqueIn a total of seventeen cards were dealt, five of which were red, Neymar reported racism on the pitch and two hits were disallowed. Kevin Strootman made his appearance after the break as a substitute for Olympique Marseille; Mitchel Bakker stayed on the bench with PSG.

Arbiter Jérôme Brisard awarded five yellow prints in the first 45 minutes, the first of which were for Neymar and Dimitri Payet after ten minutes. The tastemakers got caught up in a riot after a hard tackle by Neymar on Payet. With that incident, and the subsequent yellow card, the tone was set for Neymar. The Brazilian was particularly dissatisfied with the arbitration, especially after a possible spit incident with Ángel Di María and Álvaro González.

In minute 36, Di María walked past the defender of Álvaro, who claimed to be spit on by the Argentine. It was not completely clear from the camera images whether that was indeed the case. Neymar seemed to be siding with his team-mate, reacting to Álvaro and then insinuating that he was being racistly treated by his opponent. Social media claim that Álvaro would have said ‘shut up, monkey’ to Neymar during the altercation, but it is not entirely clear from the images whether that was indeed the case.

Stopping hitting Neymar after alleged racism

Neymar seemed to accuse Álvaro of racism during the match. Read article

It was clear that Neymar reacted with ‘racismo no’, or ‘no racism’. After that Neymar launched a tirade towards Álvaro and the technical staff of Olympique Marseille. By the way, the visitors were 0-1 ahead at that moment. After half an hour the team of André Villas-Boas had come out of nowhere ahead: Florian Thauvin was able to finish at the second post after a long free kick from Payet. PSG created few chances before the break, apart from a dangerous shot from Di María in the second minute.

After the break the aggressiveness on the field did not decrease. The many cards took the pace out of the race, to the delight of Olympique Marseille. After an hour of play the frustration increased at PSG, when a goal from Di María was rejected because he was served in offside position by Idrissa Gueye. Shortly afterwards, a goal from Olympique Marseille was also disallowed: Darío Benedetto shot in a rebound, but in the situation that preceded it, Thauvin was offside. After the introduction of Strootman Olympique Marseille held on. There was a big argument in the last minute of injury time, which led to red cards for Layvin Kurzawa, Leandro Paredes, Neymar at PSG and Jordan Amavi and Dario Benedetto among the visitors.