With the distance between Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain growing, not winning against Nantes wasn’t an option for Claudio Ranieri. So he took out Radamel Falcao after only 63 minutes. He did get himself a 1-0 win with a goal from Mounir Obbadi, but also some drama with the team’s most important player.

Falcao has been replaced before this season – In the matches against Lorient and Marseille, both wins, in which he either assisted or scored a goal. This time, against Nantes, one of the more surprising teams this season in France, Falcao was awful during his 63 minutes on the pitch, so Ranieri decided to take him off.

You can imagine the reaction from the Colombian – not a fit or getting angry, but simply being stunned. It’s hard to say if his whole “am I seeing this right” is just an act to hide the shame he felt from being taken off or actually not reading the number on the board correctly, but that’s besides the point.

Instead of focusing on Monaco beating Nantes, the focus was on Ranieri “schooling” Falcao. When asked after the match about his start striker not liking being taken off, Raineri mentioned he didn’t really care that Falcao wasn’t too fond of what happened, naturally.

Monaco are third in Ligue 1, five points behind PSG and one behind Lille, who are on a remarkable streak of nine matches without conceding a goal. Falcao has done very well in the French league after the huge summer transfer from Porto, scoring nine goals in 13 matches, not having to worry about European competitions getting in the way.