LIKE many of the great strike partnerships, Wissam Ben Yedder and Islam Slimani look like they have been playing together forever.
No sooner has the ball arrived at Slimani’s feet than Ben Yedder is on the move, be it darting into space behind the opposition defence or peeling off his marker at the back post. Physically, they look like a classic big man-little man strike duo – Slimani is 6’2”, Ben Yedder 5’7” – but theirs is a multi-faceted partnership.
Slimani sets Ben Yedder up with the occasional headed knock-down, as he did for the goal scored by the France international in Monaco’s 4-1 win over Brest in September, but he is just as likely to be found teeing up his strike partner for a goal by deftly rolling a pass into space, as in the 4-3 home defeat by Marseille, or crossing from the byline for a back-post half-volley, as he did in the recent 3-2 victory over Rennes.
2019/20 top scorers in Ligue 1:
Ben Yedder (9)
Osimhen (7)
Diallo (7)
Dembele (6)
Slimani (5)— DZ Football (@DZFootball_en) October 25, 2019
Technically dexterous and deceptively quick in spite of his gangly physique, Slimani is much more than just a target man. With seven assists in eight Ligue 1 games (four of which have been for Ben Yedder), he trails only Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne (nine) for assists in Europe’s top five leagues. Goal-poacher Ben Yedder, meanwhile, is the French top flight’s leading scorer with nine goals and only Bayern Munich’s Robert Lewandowski (13) and Lazio’s Ciro Immobile (12) can boast better goal-scoring figures in the continent’s five major championships.
Collectively, the pair have been responsible for 17 of the 19 goals that Monaco have scored in Ligue 1 this season. Across Europe, De Bruyne and Sergio Agüero (18) are the only pairing to have made a bigger contribution to their team’s cause. But while De Bruyne and Agüero have had over four years to hone their understanding at City, Ben Yedder and Slimani have been playing together for a little over two months.
“What they’re doing is impressive when you think of the few matches they’ve played together,” said Monaco team-mate Tiémoué Bakayoko. “And in everyday life, they get on very, very well. They’re often together in the changing room and that helps to create their complicity.” Monaco coach Leonardo Jardim has described the partnership as “a beautiful marriage”.
Jardim’s initial idea was to pair Ben Yedder, a €40 million capture from Sevilla, with Radamel Falcao, only for the Colombian to make it clear that he wanted out of Stade Louis II after six years of service. When Falcao joined Galatasaray, Jardim turned to Slimani, with whom he had previously worked at Sporting Lisbon. The 31-year-old Algeria international signed from Leicester City on a season-long loan with a €10 million option to buy. Both new strikers scored in their first appearance together, a 2-2 draw at home to Nîmes at the end of August, and they have not looked back.
Monaco narrowly avoided relegation last season following Jardim’s return to the dug-out in January and finished the campaign having found the net only 38 times. Jardim decided to remedy his side’s attacking shortcomings by reverting to the 4-4-2 formation with which he had led Monaco to the Ligue 1 title in 2017, when Falcao and Kylian Mbappé led the line.
Problems at the back moved him to jettison the 4-4-2 for a 3-5-2 towards the end of September, but the front two remained sacrosanct. And with good reason. After 11 games of the campaign, Jardim’s men have the second-best attack in the division after Paris Saint-Germain. They approach this weekend’s trip to Saint-Étienne (for which Slimani is an injury doubt) just three points off the top three in 11th place.
Ben Yedder, 29, has become the quickest player to score nine league goals for Monaco in the last 50 years. In doing so, he has picked up where he left off in his final season at Sevilla, where he plundered 31 goals in all competitions.
11 – Players involved in the most goals in their first seven Ligue 1 games since Opta analyses the competition (2006/07):
Islam Slimani – 11 (5 goals, 6 assists)
Neymar – 11 (6 ⚽️, 5 ️)
Kings .#ASMSRFC pic.twitter.com/p4PIVuTa2t
— OptaJean (@OptaJean) October 20, 2019
A childhood Monaco fan, the former Toulouse striker returned to France motivated by the twin ambitions of getting the club back into the Champions League and nailing down his place in Didier Deschamps’s national squad ahead of next year’s European Championship.
Ben Yedder has scored twice in his last four France appearances and has been called up for each of the last three international get-togethers despite strong competition from the likes of Alexandre Lacazette, Moussa Dembélé, Anthony Martial and Alassane Pléa. He sought the blessing of Deschamps, himself a former Monaco coach, before committing his future to Stade Louis II.
Slimani has done things in reverse, his season having been preceded by a continental triumph with Algeria at the Africa Cup of Nations. He made three appearances for Djamel Belmadi’s side in Egypt, scoring in a 3-0 group-stage win over Tanzania, contributing two assists and netting in the penalty shootout win over Ivory Coast in the quarter-finals.
Leicester broke their transfer record to sign Slimani from Sporting in August 2016, but after scoring eight goals in his first season at the King Power Stadium, he lost his way. In his second season at Leicester and during subsequent loan spells at Newcastle United and Fenerbahçe, he mustered only two league goals. The switch to Monaco looked like a gamble for both player and club. With five goals and seven assists in his first eight league outings, it has turned out to be nothing short of a rebirth.
In addition to their contrasting physical profiles, Ben Yedder and Slimani are very different characters – the former shy and quiet, the latter confident and outgoing– yet they share similarly humble back stories. Ben Yedder, whose parents both hail from Tunisia, started out playing futsal and was spotted by Toulouse while playing fourth-tier football for UJA Alfortville in the Paris suburbs. Slimani cut his teeth with JSM Chéraga in the Algerian third tier and did not make the move to Europe – joining Sporting from Algerian top-division outfit CR Belouizdad – until he was 25.
From record marksman Delio Onnis to Mbappé, via George Weah, Jürgen Klinsmann, Sonny Anderson, Thierry Henry, David Trezeguet and Falcao, Monaco have rarely wanted for great goal-scorers. In Ben Yedder and Slimani, they appear to have found two more.
