A record in the sights of Angel di Maria
PSG’s history has been rich in records since the club was founded in 1970. 50 years on, a record is set to fall very soon; that for the most assists, with Angel di Maria close to the stratospheric total of 100 assists.
In the 1970s, assists had no value to lovers of the round ball. At the start of the 1980s, the sports daily L’Equipe and the weekly France Football decided to shine the limelight on suppliers of the final pass, but with different interpretations.
The arrival of Opta changed things. The institute fixed he boundaries, awarding an assist "to the last team-mate to have touched the ball before the scorer, counting even in the case of a cross-shot, and excluding the notion of intent."
If the total of Angel di Maria is known (95 assists according to Opta), what of great players from the past to have played for the club, and in particular two phenomenal players: Mustapha Dahleb and Safet Susic?
If certain sites credit Safet Susic with 95 assists and Mustapha Dahleb with 80, that is purely based on written reports of matches, meaning an inevitable percentage of errors in the count.
In order to establish the precise figures, there's only one solution: watching all the games of these two great PSG players, the only players capable of challenging Angel di Maria.
For Mustapha Dahleb, the exact total will never be known as video highlights aren't available for all the matches played by PSG's first star (310 matches from 1974 to 1984). But it's unlikely the Algerian's total made it beyond 90, keeping him behind Angel Di Maria.
The challenge for Safet Susic (344 matches from 1982 to 1991) was met! Taking away matches without a PSG goal or those where Susic was the sole scorer, more than 200 match highlights needed to be watched in order to at last establish the number of assists made by the club's legendary playmaker.
After several weeks of research, and the rewatching of the highlights in order to avoid mistakes, the result is now known.
Fideo will have to wait a bit... Safet Susic supplied 103 assists to his team-mates, including 16 for Dominique Rocheteau, 9 for Luis Fernandez, 8 for Toko and Zlatko Vujovic and 7 for the late Jean François Charbonnier.
The record could fall soon, but Angel di Maria will first need to breach the symbolic 100 assists barrier before writing himself still further into the great history of the Rouge et Bleu.
