Suffering from a hamstring complaint picked up in the 2-1 Coupe de France elimination against Marseille in midweek, Paris Saint-Germain superstar Lionel Messi will miss Saturday's league clash with Monaco - and potentially next week's crunch Champions League clash with Bayern Munich.
As if their elimination from the Coupe de France round of 16 by arch-rivals Marseille wasn't enough, Paris Saint-Germain are now contending with the possibility of Lionel Messi's being missing from the all-important first leg of their Champions League round of 16 clash with Bayern Munich at the Parc des Princes next Tuesday.
Star trio in the wars
The Argentine played through the injury in the final stages of Wednesday's match in Marseille, but the symptoms worsened over the next day and he has since been ruled out of Saturday's potentially decisive trip to Monaco - and, worse, Tuesday's visit of Bayern Munich.
His absence is added to that of Kylian Mbappé, suffering from a thigh injury, who is also unlikely to feature against the Bavarians, while Neymar has missed Paris Saint-Germain's last two league outings as the ankle injury he suffered at the World Cup with Brazil continues to trouble him.
Left hanging
This leaves Paris Saint-Germain boss Christophe Galtier, who has been struggling to get his side to fire since the World Cup, in a real pickle. How he will deal with this development will depend largely on how Messi pulls up after further examinations on and how his squad performs in training - all of which will doubtless be undertake microscope in his pre-Monaco presser on Friday.
Watch this space.
