Celebrations were weapons-grade on 21 May 2022 when Paris Saint-Germain hoisted their 10th top flight 1 title. That party started before the match against Metz with the club president Nasser al-Khelaifi announcing to the delirious faithful that Kylian Mbappé had decided to resist the fluttering eyelids of Real Madrid to stay local until 2025 and lead the team to further glories.
And Mbappé – who was raised in the Parisian suburb of Bondy – duly unleashed more of his wondrous dazzle over the next 90 minutes.
The 23-year-old notched up a hat trick in the 5-0 demolition of Metz to send them into Ligue 2. Angel Di Maria scored PSG's fifth goal on his final appearance for the club after seven trophy laden years. Transports of delight for all and sundry.
Mbappé's strikes increased his tally to 28 goals and he secured the "Golden Boot" as the leading scorer in Ligue 1 for the fourth consecutive season. A week later Madrid lifted the Champions League trophy.
A year on, at Saturday night's fever to adorn a record 11th French championship, Mbappé will be playing at the Parc des Princes to keep his foot in that "Golden Boot" and win it for a fifth time which will emulate the feats of Carlos Bianchi and Jean-Pierre Papin.
Only Lyon's Alexandre Lacazette with 26 strikes can feasibly catch Mbappé, who has scored 28 of PSG's 87 goals in 37 matches this season.
It would be Mbappé's second "Golden Boot" of the season. He came away from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar with the accolade for his eight goals in France's surge to the runners-up spot.
Despondency oozed from his pores as he collected the award just after the loss to Argentina. He was the first player to score a hat trick in a World Cup final since Geoff Hurst's triple fired England to glory over West Germany at Wembley in 1966.
The razzmatazz on Saturday night at the Parc des Princes will be far more glitzy and multi-sensory than the monochrome and monastic offerings in London after Elizabeth II handed over the Jules Rimet trophy to Bobby Moore.
On the leafy western fringes of Paris, the Ligue 1 crown, though a welcome recompense, fails to excite the power brokers at PSG.
Ambition
They crave the Champions League. And a second consecutive elimination in the last-16 has overshadowed PSG's season.
After more than a decade of huge investment from the Qatar Sports Investments group, PSG have not added European club football's most prestigious title to the trophy cabinet. They reached the final in 2020 which they lost to Bayern Munich. Its absence has led to rethinks and revamps.
"After all that investment in transfer fees and wages, they've only got past the quarter-finals twice, in the Champions League so something is clearly very, very wrong there," said Jonathan Wilson, editor of the Britishbased football magazine The Blizzard.
"For that to be true over a 12 year period, you can't say it's just bad luck. You can't say this is a team building to something. This is a consistent pattern of failure."
"And the fact that PSG are so much stronger than everybody else in Ligue 1 means that they're not really tested and they lose that hard edge. So every time they come up against a decent team in the Champions League, they really struggle.
"They weren't even close to Bayern this season and I don't think this Bayern team were particularly strong."
Indeed. Bayern – under the former PSG boss Thomas Tuchel – only won their 11th consecutive Bundesliga title because Borussia Dortmund fluffed their lines on the last day of the season on 27 May.
Loss
Tuchel was in charge when PSG lost in the Champions League final. He was soon sacked for his sins and replaced by Mauricio Pochettino who led them to the semis in 2021 before the last-16 humiliation in 2022.
Christophe Galtier, who took over from Pochettino last July, said on the eve of Saturday night's game against Clermont: "We need to make it a pleasant evening for our last home game. We want to finish on a high note."
For supporters of many clubs, a league title would be greeted with unalloyed joy. In Paris? It's yes, but. So beholden have the fans become to Champions League success.
Galtier's future is under review. Andy why not? Julian Nagelsmann, formerly of the parish of Bayern, is available. Roma boss Jose Mourinho might be attempted to shine his special light in Paris too.
If Galtier were to depart, the 56-year-old Frenchman would stride away with a second Ligue title on his CV after his success with Lille in 2021 and a rare boast.
"If I have to remember one thing about the season ... it's becoming champions of France after being at the top of the table from the first to the last day."
Change
That's not a bad calling card. But the coup wasn't deemed good enough by his Ligue 1 counterparts who preferred to salute Franck Haise of Lens as coach of the year for steering the outfit to second place and a slot in next season's Champions League for the first time in two decades.
Marseille, who finished third, will play in the qualifying rounds of next season's Champions League led by a new boss.
Igor Tudor, who was appointed last summer advocating hard work and a collective identity, resigned this week citing professional and personal reasons for his decision.
"A lot has happened this year, both positive and negative," said the 45-year-old Croatian. "But in the end that's just like anywhere else. Working here for a year is like working for three years at another club. I'm quite at peace with myself."
Marseille, who eliminated PSG from the Coupe de France a few weeks before losing to them in Ligue 1, finish their campaign at relegated Ajaccio.
Battle
One point separates the three teams vying for fourth and fifth place from Ligue 1 which leads to a berth in the Europa League and the Europa Conference League respectively.
Fourth-placed Lille play at relegated Troyes while Rennes, in fifth, travel to Brest for a Breton derby. Monaco, who are sixth, entertain Toulouse.
"We will have to do the work against Toulouse and then we will see what the other two teams do," said the Monaco defender Axel Disasi.
The 25-year-old France international added: "We can't go into the permutations but ultimately it will be a failure if we do not finish in one of the spots for the European competitions knowing what the expectations were at the start of the season."
Such tournaments are a galaxy far, far away for Auxerre and Nantes who will try on Saturday night to avoid the fourth and final relegation spot.
Auxerre need to mirror Nantes' result to avoid returning to Ligue 2 a season after their promotion. Fans of whoever succeeds will be able to enjoy the ensuing festivities without having to wonder about that really big animal hanging around.
