Donnarumma to the rescue again!

Things didn’t look good for Paris Saint-Germain on Sunday evening, just before the break. With several absentees in defence, the visitors were playing Le Classique against Marseille with Lucas Beraldo and Danilo Pereira as centre backs, and the young Brazilian was sent off, and it looked as if the leaders had given the initiative to a Marseille side who, buoyed by a raucous atmosphere at the Stade Vélodrôme, wanted to get one over on their bitter rival.

But if that was the case, the home fans hadn’t counted on Gianluigi Donnarumma.

Donnarumma was fantastic during Le Classique 🇮🇹🧱 pic.twitter.com/c7taTPKaB7

— Ligue 1 English (@Ligue1_ENG) March 31, 2024

The Italian goalkeeper set a record for the fixture for a Paris Saint-Germain goalkeeper, making ten saves and keeping a clean sheet despite his team already not having the likes of Marquinhos and Milan Skriniar fit enough to start. The ten saves also brought Donnarumma’s saves/match ratio to 3.52 — higher than any other goalkeeper in the top half of the table, underscoring that the leaders’ success this season is far more of the product of strong play from the likes of Kylian Mbappé and the team’s well-known coterie of attackers.

Indeed, the win represented a fifth in five attempts in this fixture in the league for Donnarumma, as well as a fourth clean sheet in a row. Between he and his predecessors, Marseille haven’t scored a goal at home in Le Classique since Florian Thauvin found the back of the net in 2017. Donnarumma also kept his 11th clean sheet of the season — only three players have more and only two — Brice Samba of RC Lens and Lucas Chevalier of LOSC Lille — have recorded a higher percentage of them.

Now, Donnarumma and his teammates will face a challenging Stade Rennais side with a place in the Coupe de France final on the line tomorrow, before taking on FC Barcelona in the Champions League quarterfinals next week. The league title may be all but sewn up, but the next week will be pivotal to PSG’s season, and with Donnarumma in this sort of form, it’s hard to bet against the capital side.