Donnarumma, Salah, Haaland and the Absentees XI giving Qatar World Cup 2022 a miss

Picture the scene just outside Paris, on Friday. The players of Paris Saint-Germain will be gathering at their well-appointed training ground, many of them back together for the first time in nearly two weeks, having been away on international duty.

The mood may be sombre. PSG’s last match was a 3-0 defeat to Monaco, hot on the heels of their collapse and subsequent finger-pointing in the Champions League against Real Madrid.

And there’s the issue that cannot help but divide the dressing-room. Some of the superstars of PSG will be eagerly focused on the 6pm draw (8pm UAE) for the World Cup finals. Some will want to avoid all talk of it.

Not least the goalkeeper who PSG signed last summer. Eight days ago Gianluigi Donnarumma watched a stoppage-time shot from Aleksandar Trajkovski, of North Macedonia, spear its way past him, the goal that eliminated Italy in their World Cup play-off semi-final.

It capped an awful month for Donnarumma, blamed for allowing Madrid to come back from 2-0 down in the Champions League last-16 tie, beaten three times by Monaco and, at the tender age of 23, now a member of two Italy squads that have failed to qualify for successive World Cups.

Donnarumma has yet to shake off the idea that he was one of the statement signings PSG made for this season that they did not actually need, that the club’s Qatar-based owners recruitment strategy was partly designed on having PSG well represented on the pitch at the Qatar World Cup.

Donnarumma, like Marco Verratti, his countryman and teammate, will not be there. Donnarumma is not yet the unchallenged owner of the goalkeeping gloves at PSG either. Keylor Navas, who has been keeping high standards in Paris for several years, and the Italian share duties on an