Football Hipster Alert: AS Monaco might be really, really good

After suffering relegation at the end of the 2010/11 season, Monaco began to ask themselves some serious questions.

Chief among them: how could one of the most successful sides in the history of French football find themselves so fundamentally unable to compete that they get demoted to Ligue 2?

Answers were hard to come by, and by December of their first season in the second tier they were bottom of the table.
The first signs of hope came with a Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev. He acquired the club when they were at their lowest and financed a rebuilding project that say them promoted back into Ligue 1 following the 2012/13 season.

Rybolovlev wasn’t quite content yet however. He splashed £140 million on the transfer market over the summer, acquiring the likes of Joao Moutinho, James Rodríguez and Falcao when he was still a world-beater. Les Monégasques immediately began to compete and finished in second place behind PSG in their first season back.

Monaco’s riches-to-rags-to-riches story was unique, but they weren’t alone. It was playing out in its most basic form all over Europe at roughly the same time.

Manchester City and PSG are perhaps the two biggest, most successful examples. There were also teams like Málaga in Spain, who briefly found themselves in the limelight with a deep Champions League run before again falling back to earth.

Thanks in part to the implementation of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules, Monaco began to veer closer to Málaga’s fate than PSG’s. Rodríguez was sold to Real Madrid while many other promising young players like Yannick Ferreira Carrasco and Geoffery Kondogbia were also allowed to leave. Falcao left on loan to ease the burden of his sizable salary.

What’s more, hardly any of the money generated from those sales went back into acquiring proper, ready-to-compete replacements. Sales generated almost £76 million in the summer of 2014 per Transfermarkt, but only £34 million was spent on new players.

To the casual observer, this was Monaco settling for also-ran status. Claudio Ranieri, who had orchestrated their return to Ligue 1, left and a relatively unheralded Jardim came in.

Monaco finished third in 2014/15, 12 points and 32 goals behind champions PSG. The gulf only widened last season as Jardim’s side could only watch as PSG finished 31 points above them with 45 more goals scored.

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Results like these are deceiving however. There was a revolution going on in the principality. Jardim used the proceeds from all those high-profile sales sparingly but intelligently. Scouting and player development trumped aggressive transfer offers.

Fabinho, Bakayoko, Lemar and Bernardo Silva came in for a combined total of £29 million. They average just 22 years old between the four of them. Despite their age and inexperience, each quickly found a path into Jardim’s starting XI.

Buttressed by veterans like Moutinho and Falcao (who returned from his disastrous loan spells this summer), Jardim’s Monaco look reborn. Even through the most recent lackluster seasons, the team began to stand out.

When they finished third in 2014/15, they did so with the best defensive record in the entire league.  In 38 matches they conceded just 26 goals, ten fewer than PSG that season. Though they conceded almost twice as many goals the following year, but also added goals of their own.

Jardim’s philosophy really began to take hold this season however. With just over half the season played, Monaco’s defense ranks third best behind PSG and Nice.

Both of those teams still trail Monaco thanks to a truly magnificent goalscoring record. In 21 matches played, Jardim’s boys have scored a whopping 64 goals,or an an average of over three goals per match. That is not only a stunning improvement over their recent seasons, it is far and away the best offense in all of Europe’s top five leagues.

Something sets Monaco apart from the other top-scoring sides in Europe though. While Barcelona and Real Madrid can count on the superhuman contributions of Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez, Monaco thrive without a standout scorer.

Falcao is indeed enjoying a renaissance, but only to the tune of 12 goals. The rest of Monaco’s haul is spread throughout the squad, with the aforementioned four youngsters combining for 18 goals and ten assists between them in the league.

Add to that the fact that Monaco topped a Champions League group that featured both Bayer Leverkusen and Tottenham. Indeed, they pulled off a remarkable double over the latter, using a stern counter-attacking game to beat Spurs 2-1 in London.

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If Manchester City can shrug off performances in Ligue 1, they can’t so easily ignore those wins over Tottenham. Mauricio Pochettino’s team came in as favorites, and Monaco never looked particularly intimidated by them. This is a young, confident and adaptive team that is demanding to be tested.

Before City get their chance, Monaco travel to Paris this Sunday to meet the reigning champions. Their first meeting ended 3-1 in Monaco’s favor despite PSG dominating possession and completing over twice as many passes. With Jardim’s team riding high, PSG — and the rest of football — might finally learn to fear the Red and Whites.