The two sides of Randal Kolo Muani | OneFootball

He’s perhaps the biggest enigma in French football at the moment, and that is unlikely to change following his performance on Monday night.

Randal Kolo Muani (25) has consistently produced with the national team, notching a brace in a 2-1 triumph for France over Belgium in the UEFA Nations League.

The 2022 World Cup runner-up has nine goal involvements in his last eight starts with Les Bleus, while he’s got more goals than anyone for Didier Deschamps’ side this year (six).

In their victory on Monday, Kolo Muani became the first French player to net a brace against the Red Devils since Jean-Pierre Papin in the early 1990s.

Indeed, Kolo Muani has been productive for the national team, but the same cannot be said about his form at club level for Paris Saint-Germain.

The Bondy-born player has had anything but a stellar career with Les Parisiens, joining them from Eintracht Frankfurt in a €90m deal in September 2023.

With only 11 goals in 49 competitive matches played for the reigning Ligue 1 champions, it would be fair to see he’s not lived up to expectations. In Paris, Kolo Muani has looked low on confidence and not nearly the same cold-blooded attacker we have seen in France.

National team manager Didier Deschamps said that there may be a reason for the performance differences for Kolo Muani. “With us, he has a different framework, where he knows what I expect from him,” Deschamps said before the start of Euro 2024.

The rangy physique and dribbling of Kolo Muani have been compared to Thierry Henry, but he’s still got a long way to go, to equal the consistency that the 1998 World Cup winner showed for club and country during the prime of his career.

Luis Enrique has a reputation for having players on a short leash after a poor performance, and Kolo Muani’s minutes with the club have deteriorated, with just two Ligue 1 start this season.

His current salary suggests that PSG believed him to be an elite striker in world football; however, it’s not paid off for the club as of yet.

For a player who was relatively unknown until the semi-finals of the 2022 World Cup, his expectations with PSG may be too high.

He scored 15 goals in 32 Bundesliga fixtures during the 2022-23 campaign, his best as a professional, however, his numbers before that do not suggest he’s a consistent prolific scorer that warrants the kind of salary he’s receiving.

Before his time at Frankfurt, Kolo Muani had just one double-digit season of domestic goals, netting 12 for FC Nantes in 2021-22.

Without Kylian Mbappé (25) in Paris, there’s been a lot on the plate of the PSG strikers, and the club chose not to make big signings to fill the void left when the French captain moved to Real Madrid.

There’s always pressure when you feature for France, but it feels like he doesn’t have as big of a weight on his shoulders with Les Bleus compared to PSG.

Kolo Muani has admitted to not being up to par at times with PSG, saying at the end of the previous campaign that he wished he could quickly forget his first season with the club.

The case of Randal Kolo Muani has never been an open and shut case, nor will it be any time soon.

GFFN | Joel Lefevre