Fall and Zoilo: the pair that adds up for Monaco
Seven games with Boubacar Fall and Xabi Zoilo together have brought six wins and a defence leaking less than a goal a game; the three without either tell a rather different story.
“When those two play, we know where the ball is going,” a Monaco voice said this week, and the figures have been saying much the same since August.
Seven matches this season with Boubacar Fall and Xabi Zoilo in harness: six wins, one defeat, three goals scored a game and 0.7 conceded. Three matches with one of them missing: three defeats, 0.3 scored and two conceded. Put simply, Monaco average 3.0 at one end and 0.7 at the other when the pair start, and 0.3 and 2.0 when they do not. The difference in goals scored is a factor of ten; at the back it is close to three. That is not a wobble. That is a team changing shape.
It is also the shape of the table. Monaco opened with four straight wins, a start The French Daily called a Grand Prix, and were still top on 22 September even after a first defeat, with Marseille, Nice and Paris Saint-Germain level on points and Nîmes unbeaten just behind. The pack has closed, but the lead has not gone.
The individual numbers explain the collective ones. Fall, 30, has 348 club games and 125 goals behind him, plus 126 caps and 60 goals for Senegal, and is well known across his continent. Zoilo, 26, has 259 club games and 143 goals across eight clubs, and no senior international caps at all. Between them they have spent their careers finding the net in different shirts; together, the scoring has become a routine.
The cautionary note came on 4 October, when FK Čukarički Beograd beat Monaco 1-0 in the UEFA Europa League. One data point is not a trend. But it is the sort of evening that makes the with-and-without split worth watching rather than merely admiring.
Monaco’s summer was busy: Ido Hayat arrived from Olympique Lyonnais for £1.9m, Josh Manning from Hertha Berlin for £4.1m, and Merouane Mokrani scored twice and made another in the 4-0 win over RC Lens. The supporting cast has changed. The attack has not.
Seven games is a small sample, and small samples are how false dawns get sold. But the gap here is wide enough to survive a little scepticism. Six wins from seven with the pair, none from three without; three goals a game against 0.3. Monaco’s season so far has a simple arithmetic, and it is written in two names.