Brest 0-1 PSG: Ferran Torres ends the champions' winless start to the league season

PSG needed five minutes to do something they had not managed in their first three league games of the season: score first, and this time make it stand up. Ferran Torres intercepted a loose pass from Joris Chotard, drove into space, traded a quick one-two with Ousmane Dembélé, and curled the ball past the Brest goalkeeper. It was the only goal of the afternoon at the Stade Francis-Le Blé, and it was enough.

A winless start, ended in the fifth minute

Three matchdays into the defence of their title, PSG had not won a single Ligue 1 fixture: a 2-2 draw at Rennes on the opening weekend, another 2-2 at home to Lille, then a 1-2 home defeat to Monaco. Three matches, two points, and questions building about a team that had also lost the Trophée des Champions to Lens over the summer. Brest, by contrast, arrived unbeaten — two draws and a win from their first three, without conceding more than two in any of them.

None of that history mattered much once Torres finished. PSG did not need to chase the game after that, and a Brest side that had been solid all season without being prolific — six goals in three matches — could not find a way past a PSG defence that, for once this season, only had to protect a single-goal lead rather than chase an equaliser of its own.

Brest arrived unbeaten off the back of two draws and a win, and they had not lost by more than a single goal in any of their three matches — six scored, five conceded, a side built more on discipline than on firepower. PSG's finish here was exactly the kind of moment that breaks a pattern like that: one clean strike from open play in the fifth minute, with no set piece or defensive slip needed to unlock it.

Torres is already paying back the transfer fee

Torres joined PSG from Barcelona in the close season and arrived with a claim few new signings can make: he scored the goal that won Spain the World Cup final this summer. He needed a little time to get going in Ligue 1, but the timing since has been extraordinary — a hat-trick in midweek as PSG thrashed Slovan Bratislava 6-1 in the Champions League, and now the only goal of the game at Brest four days later. In the space of one week he has been directly involved in the vast majority of PSG's goals, and he did the hardest part of Sunday's alone: winning the ball back, carrying it forward himself, and finishing with his weaker instep into the corner rather than settling for a tap-in service from someone else.

What's next

Before kickoff PSG sat 14th on 2 points from three matchdays, without a league win to their name since lifting the title last season — an uncomfortable place for the reigning champions to be in September. This result takes them to 5 points and, more importantly, ends the run of results that had followed them through the international window questions and the Trophée des Champions defeat. Brest, who had gone into the weekend 7th on 5 points off the back of an unbeaten start, take their first loss of the season and stay on 5 points as well — the two sides level again, but PSG will feel they have turned a corner that Brest are still looking to find.