Adi Hütter's AS Monaco came out of the Champions League match in Belgium against Club Brugge with broken bones.
Yesterday's heavy defeat against the Blauw en Zwart (4-1) undermines the certainties with which the Monegasques had started the season, after a market deemed satisfactory by club and fans.
The trip to Belgium had begun under a bad omen, as the Monaco team was stranded at Nice airport, inside a plane without air conditioning, on the very eve of the match.
In addition to the damage, there was also the mockery, as the trip ended with a poor performance from Hütter's team, crushed by an organised Club Brugge, with evidently superior preparation for the match.
There was also room for some disappointment at individual level, such as Akliouche's missed penalty early in the match (10 minutes), which could have influenced the rest of the course of the game, or perhaps not, given the subsequent undisputed dominance of the Belgians.
At the end of the match, this missed penalty also caused much discussion, both for Akliouche's excessive nonchalance in executing it, and for his decision to take this responsibility, when Mika Biereth was expected to shoot.
Adi Hütter, coach of AS Monaco, was brutally honest post-match. “We were lucky that Club Bruges were only 3-0 up at half-time,” he admitted.
Hütter and his men returned home empty-handed, except for a lesson that was as heavy as it was important, because it immediately exposed the shortcomings of this team.
The next test will be on Sunday, in the league match against Metz at the Stade Louis II (17:15).
