AS Monaco beaten by Servette in opening pre-season friendly | OneFootball

Luke Entwistle reporting from La Turbie

AS Monaco were bearen 1-0 by Swiss side Servette in their first pre-season friendly, held at the Principality club’s performance centre in La Turbie on Saturday morning, in front of the onlooking Thiago Scuro and Dmitry Rybolovlev.

Despite ongoing talks regarding the Principality club’s potential sale, Rybolovlev is as present as ever and watched on as a diminished Monaco side lost to Servette. With many of Monaco’s players still competing, either at Euro 2024 or the Copa América, Adi Hütter fielded a mix of first-team regulars and Diagonale academy products – there were more of the latter in the second-half as the Austrian made 11 changes to the side that went into the break at 0-0.

Jérémy Guillemenot got the only goal of the game, beating Philipp Köhn with a driven effort into the bottom corner from the edge of the box. Les Monégasques fielded returning loanees Felix Lemarechal, Myron Boadu and Eliot Matazo; the latter two in particular are playing for their future at the club in the coming weeks.

“It’s always the same at the beginning of pre-season. I was not happy with the result. The players are a little fatigued because we have trained a lot – it’s like that in pre-season. We don’t spend [much time] thinking about results. It’s about continuing progressing our style of play,” reacted Hütter post-match.

On the returning loanees, the Austrian said, “We will give them time to show… they have the opportunity to show that they want to stay here.” Boadu, Matazo and Lemarechal still have time to play their ways into Hütter’s plans with matches against Cercle Brugge, Sturm Graz and Feyenoord still to come. Other friendlies are also likely to be arranged, as CEO Thiago Scuro confirmed, following the postponement of the Trophées des Champions.

Monaco 1st-half XI

Majecki; Jakobs, Kehrer, Singo, Babaï; Camara, Golovin; Ouattara, Lemarechal, Diatta; Boadu.

Monaco 2nd-half XI

Köhn; Bery, Nibombe, Valme; Semedo Varela, Matazo, Diop, Platret; Bamba; Etonde, Bertolucci.

GFFN | Luke Entwistle