Champions League title still eludes PSG

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This article was published 09/02/2019 (2746 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What does a billion euros buy you in contemporary soccer? If you’re Paris Saint-Germain, it’ll yield five Ligue 1 titles in seven years, a shelf full of cups and the two most-expensive players in the history of the sport. What it won’t get you, at least not yet, is that most-desired and prestigious of club championships: the UEFA Champions League.

On Tuesday, for the seventh time since Nasser Al-Khelaifi and Qatar Sports Investments acquired a controlling interest in the French outfit, PSG will kick off a Champions League knockout phase. They’ll do it having recently lost their first league match of the season, and, to make matters worse, they’ll be without the services of Neymar, who has a foot injury.

Given their recent and occasionally shocking failures in this competition, they’ll also go into the first leg of their round-of-16 matchup with Manchester United under considerable pressure — the expectations of domestic success and those transfer outlays combining to weigh them down more than any other team in Europe.

It turns out a billion euros doesn’t buy you much in the way of confidence, either.

Ironically, one of PSG’s biggest problems has been that they’re good, too good — at least for France. It’s one thing to swashbuckle your way through provincial towns in Brittany and Pays de la Loire. It’s another thing to instantly raise your game to the level of your rivals on the continent.

Year after year, it’s a switch Les Rouge et Bleu prove unable to flip.

Memorably, after beating Barcelona 4-0 at this stage in 2017, they were trounced 6-1 in the return match at Camp Nou. Never mind that they had shellacked Marseille 5-1 on the south coast just 10 days prior. The shift in gear the Champions League required of them was too much for a club accustomed to cruise control.

A year ago, en route to a domestic quadruple that included 108 goals scored in the top flight, they were beaten at home and away by Real Madrid. And no one was surprised. Because by then, their reputation as Champions League underachievers had already been established.

In fact, a brutally honest assessment of PSG’s record will have found that their window of opportunity had already started closing.

Incidentally, they lost 2-1 at Lyon in the days leading up to that round-of-16 first leg as well. Then, like now, they had the title all but sewn up, and they could afford to be even more casual about their domestic schedule than usual. And by then, as in so many seasons prior, they were never going to be able to sufficiently jolt themselves from a victory stroll down the Champs-Élysées to pose a serious challenge to an elite opponent.

Manchester United, for its part, could hardly have wished for a more amenable draw. It’s been well near unstoppable since Ole Gunnar Solskjaer replaced Jose Mourinho as manager on an interim basis, and its suddenly mobile front line could be problematic for PSG defenders Thiago Silva and Presnel Kimpembe — the former who isn’t exactly blessed with speed and the latter who is prone to a foul.

United, presently fifth in the Premier League and unbeaten since December in all competitions, will also be heartened by Kylian Mbappé’s recent struggles in meaningful matches. In five outings against Monaco, Liverpool, Napoli (twice) and Lyon this term, he has found the back of the net just once — and without Neymar getting attention on the opposite flank, he’ll be easier for United to track.

What PSG could have really used ahead of Tuesday was the return of tenacious midfielder Marco Verratti, who would have surely relished the occasion of a physical encounter in England. But the 26-year-old, who had been working his way back from an ankle injury, suffered a knock in training this week that will likely keep him from featuring at Old Trafford.

That billion euros isn’t even good for a clean bill of health. What it does guarantee — and maybe the only thing — is expectation, the pressure of which these players simply haven’t been able to manage since it was imposed on them.

The thing is, going the distance in the Champions League is now less a matter of PSG living up to those expectations than of proving detractors — the loudest of which are inside their heads — wrong.

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● Valour FC will know a little more its 2019 Canadian Championship fate when the competition’s first matchups and subsequent rounds are drawn on Tuesday. Seeded into the second qualifying round, the Winnipeg side will face one of Vaughan Azzurri, AS Blainville, Calgary FC, HFX Wanderers FC, Pacific FC and York9 FC in a home-and-away series on June 5 and 12. Reigning Canadian champions Toronto FC will enter the tournament’s semifinal phase in August. “The continued expansion of the Canadian Championship is a testament to the growth and professionalization of soccer in our country,” Canada Soccer general secretary Peter Montopoli said in a statement.

● Miguel Almiron, Newcastle’s record signing, is expected to make his Magpies debut at Wolves on Monday. Following his US$27-million move from Major League Soccer champions Atlanta United, the 24-year-old Paraguay international’s arrival in the Premier League was greeted by the usual, and disheartening, “Who is he?” columns in numerous navel-gazing English news outlets. In Almiron, Newcastle is getting a playmaking forward who can play either through the middle or from the left, and always looks to involve his teammates in the buildup. Watch for him to perhaps come on for Christian Atsu and function to the left of Salomon Rondon at Molineux.

● Don’t look now, but Bayern Munich could find itself 10 points off the Bundesliga lead after this weekend. Coming off a 3-1 defeat at Bayer Leverkusen that ended a seven-match winning streak in the German top flight, the reigning champions will host Schalke today in a tricky showdown between two teams that have underachieved this term. Schalke, in 12th place, lost 2-0 at Borussia Monchengladbach this past weekend and will be looking for a bounce-back performance at Allianz-Arena. First-place Borussia Dortmund, meanwhile, is presently seven points clear of both Gladbach and Bayern and will host Hoffenheim in one of today’s early matches.

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Twitter: @JerradPeters