Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland are very much the future. Barcelona and Juventus might soon be consigned to the Champions League past.
Kylian Mbappe, man of his word
The pre-match prophecy he proffered to Mauricio Pochettino was realised in breath-taking fashion. But the callous warning to Jordi Alba that “I’ll kill you in the street” was less a threat and more a brutal spoiler.
Gerard Pique interjected himself into that exchange with those famous last words: “Who are you going to kill?”. He proceeded to be sucked into a vortex of existential 34-year-old angst, coupled with his new identity as an actual meme.
It was astonishingly savage, the sort of performance that would have made Roman Abramovich feel young again. The story goes that the Russian oligarch was so infatuated with Ronaldo’s dismantling of Manchester United in the Champions League quarter-finals in 2003 that he felt obliged to purchase Chelsea a matter of months later. It should depress us all that Mbappe was five then, his bedroom yet to be converted into the Ronaldo shrine – CR7, not OG – it would soon become.
The thing I want to know about this Mbappe picture is: how did he manage to get into Ronaldo’s bedroom? pic.twitter.com/I87V2kfIad
— Tom Williams (@tomwfootball) June 30, 2018
The comparisons to the original Ronaldo are so very apt: the skill, the intelligence, the footwork, the finishing. Even the explosiveness when transitioning out of those dizzying stepovers harks back to one of the most naturally gifted forwards in the sport’s history. It is a fine path to follow.
But it was not just about the goals on Tuesday. Each were delightful and destructive yet only addendums to the wider statement. Mbappe had more touches than Sergio Busquets and Frenkie De Jong – Barcelona midfielders at home – with one less than Lionel Messi. If six shots and three goals brought Ronaldo to mind, then Garrincha was channelled through his ten dribbles and Ronaldinho could be seen in his four key passes and the general glee which underpinned his dominance. It was the most Brazilian a boy from Bondy has ever been.
It felt as though Barcelona could not get close him, but no PSG player was fouled more often. So impressed was Pique that he attempted to swap shirts midway through.
And all that without Neymar or Angel di Maria alongside him. Mbappe was charged with carrying the burden of a superstar and he thrived like the world champion he is. His only previous goal in nine Champions League knockout stage games for PSG was against Manchester United in 2019. There will surely be no Rashford or Remontada this year.
The supporting cast
It was inevitable and understandable that Mbappe would dominate the story. He had to. But he conjured that performance against the backdrop of a wonderful team effort.
Leandro Paredes was excellent, his struggles under Thomas Tuchel long forgotten as he controlled proceedings from deep. Marco Verratti ahead of him was a sublime link between midfield and attack. Marquinhos led from the back with distinction while Moise Kean showed that there is a glaring difference between a bad footballer and a bad fit. There are few of the former at professional level but so very many of the latter. Under Pochettino currently, there is no such thing.
Mauricio Pochettino, getting his first leg over
What follows is a brief look at Pochettino’s record in first legs of European knockout ties:
A 1-1 home draw with Fiorentina in the Europa League round of 32 in 2015.
A 1-1 away draw with Fiorentina in the Europa League round of 32 in 2016.
A 3-0 away defeat to Borussia Dortmund in the Europa League last 16 in 2016.
A 1-0 away defeat to Gent in the Europa League round of 32 in 2017.
A 2-2 away draw with Juventus in the Champions League last 16 in 2018.
A 3-0 home win over Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League last 16 in 2019.
A 1-0 home win over Manchester City in the Champions League quarter-final in 2019.
A 1-0 home defeat to Ajax in the Champions League semi-final in 2019.
After winning two of eight European knockout first legs over four years with Tottenham, it must feel wonderful to finally establish some actual breathing space. Pochettino is proper.
Sadio Mane
There has been a renewed and justified push to recognise and appreciate Mohamed Salah’s quality of late. Between that and the constant re-evaluation of what Roberto Firmino brings to Liverpool, Sadio Mane can often feel like their third attacking wheel.
It is an obvious nonsense. But there is something about this competition that fuels Mane to make a further mockery of the idea he is not an elite-level talent.
The forward now has 11 goals in the Champions League knockout stages, more than Fernando Torres, Samuel Eto’o and Zlatan Ibrahimovic among others, and as many as Kaka. Only three players in history have scored more Champions League knockout stage goals for Premier League clubs: Frank Lampard (15), Didier Drogba (14) and Wayne Rooney (14).
Mane overtook Cristiano Ronaldo (ten) in the week on that metric. No-one is about to argue he is or will become as good, but that is a pertinent reminder of the plane at which he operates. In this tournament particularly, few have ever been quite as decisive when it matters.
Erling Haaland
“When I saw Mbappe score the hat trick, I got free motivation, so thanks to him,” Erling Haaland said, leaning so far into the narrative that you could almost hear Stephen Fry reading the audiobook. “He scored some nice goals and I got a free boost from him, so it was nice.”
It was probably a deliberate ploy to play up to the comparisons of Erling and Kylian becoming the new Cristiano and Lionel. That is the sort of healthy rivalry that professionals, particularly strikers, so often feed off. His “free motivation” line was telling.
But if either player experiences even half the club career of Messi and Ronaldo, then the same fate may well befall them both: of their ludicrous goalscoring exploits being overlooked and normalised.
For Haaland, those were his 40th and 41st goals in 42 games for Dortmund, accompanied by his tenth assist. In the Champions League alone he has 18 goals and two assists in 13 matches. In a tournament designed to separate wheat from chaff, Haaland is sowing his goalscoring seeds with single-minded aplomb. Talk about a Sevilla headache.
Sergio Conceicao’s team talks
The concession of a late away goal will hang over Porto like the dark lining to an otherwise silver cloud. It was almost the perfect counter-attacking performance at home, built on solid defensive foundations first and foremost, while retaining a desire to surge forward when necessary.
That Federico Chiesa effort in the 82nd minute might even make Juventus favourites to advance. Porto would surely embrace the chance to work tirelessly in the shadows again while their much-vaunted opponents struggle in the glare.
Juventus were architects of their own downfall after 61 seconds of the first half, but the move that crowned Porto scoring within 19 seconds of the restart was delightful. Moussa Marega, Jesus Corona, Otavio and Wilson Manafa combined beautifully as The Old Lady failed to keep up.
Credit must go to the players for such a committed, dedicated performance, but Sergio Conceicao set them up perfectly. They were solid and compact, pressing high and with intent. “The players interpreted our plan perfectly,” the manager noted post-match. Lovely.
Julen Lopetegui
Even in defeat, one can be declared something of a winner. That tie could have completely escaped Sevilla after a 24-minute blitz put Dortmund two goals ahead shortly before half-time. But Julen Lopetegui corrected his mistakes, shored up the midfield at the break by introducing the energy of Nemanja Gudelj in the place of Ivan Rakitic and rescued something from nothing.
With two of his subsequent four substitutions combining to halve the deficit late on – Luuk de Jong finishing from Oscar Rodriguez’s free-kick – Lopetegui did well to bring Sevilla back from the brink.
Ozan Kabak
His previous game against Leipzig was on February 22. Including that 5-0 defeat, Kabak had played 23 games against German opposition over the past year and conceded 57 goals – one every 34.2 minutes. This was his second clean sheet in those 360 days. Insert line about Turkish delight here.
Losers
Barcelona
In their defence, Barcelona were literally only half as bad as they were in their previous Champions League knockout game. To go from losing 8-2 in August to the eventual champions to being beaten 4-1 in February by the most recent runners-up is progress. The 2-0 defeat in Paris next month should be greeted as the next step on their path to mediocrity.
The most striking thing is that Barcelona have come back from an even worse position against the exact same team before, yet the psychological damage of this defeat overrides any historic precedence for hope. They were taken apart at home by a better manager in charge of better individuals, coached to make a better team. PSG were superior to Barcelona not only as composite parts but also as the sum. Considering the structural mess of egos that has supposedly undermined past progress at the Parc des Princes, that is saying something.
Barcelona are arguably in a worse place now than PSG ever were. The mounting, crippling debts, the iconic player desperate to leave and happy for that to be public knowledge. A squad otherwise composed of pieces that used to fit but do so no longer, some that might in the future and others that never really will. Combine that with a manager for whom everything before this has been a stepping stone to a destiny he never seemed suited for, and they are probably back to 2002/03 in terms of needing to rip everything up before starting again. Only this time they might not have one of the greatest players in football history to build around.
Andrea Pirlo
Maurizio Sarri was not the right man. He didn’t fit, either stylistically or ideologically. Yet he at least cleared the lowest bar of delivering a Serie A title while limping out of the Champions League.
Andrea Pirlo might still match that achievement. Juventus are eight points behind Inter Milan with a game in hand, trailing both Roma and Milan, too. But on Wednesday they looked precisely like a team coached by someone who had not managed at senior level until September.
It never reflects well on a manager if a team concedes early in one half, never mind both. It indicates that they are set up wrong tactically or mentally, neither of which is to be expected at this level.
But then any on-pitch naivety has trickled down from the boardroom. That was the youngest Juventus starting line-up in the Champions League since the 1998 final, led by what seems to be the latest misguided attempt to mimic Barcelona’s success with homegrown coaching in Pep Guardiola. Thus far, the experiment has backfired horribly.
Cristiano Ronaldo
“This was why Juventus brought me here, to help do things that they have never done before,” said Cristiano Ronaldo in March 2019. “This is the mentality you need to win in the Champions League.”
That was not. It was all sorts of clumsy and disjointed, a performance befitting that of his team rather than betraying it.
Chiesa’s goal was actually Juventus’ first in the Champions League knockout stages since Ronaldo joined that he did not score. That underlines how much they have relied on him in the past as much as it exposes the silliness on still depending on him into the long-term future.
Ronaldo has dominated this competition to an absurd extent. From 2010/11 to 2017/18, he guided Real Madrid to at least the semi-finals without exception, winning the tournament four times. Since leaving for Juventus as a European champion in summer 2018 he has been eliminated at the quarter-final and last-16 stage, standing on the brink at the first knock-out hurdle once again.
Not since his first two years at Manchester United has Ronaldo failed to make it past the last 16 in consecutive seasons. Juventus will need his typical second-leg heroics to prevent a repeat. Considering they signed him specifically to win the bloody thing, that marks his signing as a relative failure.
Dayot Upamecano
Perhaps we are all losers, robbed of the prospect of Dayot Upamecano passing to every opposition striker in 20 yards while Harry Maguire is so disoriented by having to turn incessantly that he becomes consumed with the idea that referees are biased against Manchester United. That central-defensive pairing will exist only in our fantasies.
Upamecano was declared Bayern-bound last weekend and he will continue to impress in the Bundesliga. But on the basis of his showings in the Champions League this season there is much left to learn for the 22-year-old.
It was after similar errors in possession against PSG in November that Julian Nagelsmann publicly voiced his concerns and pointed out the “learning curve” Upamecano was on:
“The mistakes he’s making are all starting the same way. He wants to pass the ball to the attackers right away once he’s won it. That simply does not work all the time. He has to recognise when he can play the ball forward and when not. He is used to playing the ball forward fast to create a counter-attack. He grew up like this during his first year at Leipzig, when this was the main tactic. Now the next step has to come.”
Old habits die hard. Reputations perish quickly. Between this and his erratic display in the 5-0 defeat to Manchester United last year, his standing among that all important demographic – teenage Premier League fans with Twitter usernames that end in ‘ology’ or ‘oholic’ – has suffered potentially irreparable damage.
Ivan Rakitic
There are hospital balls and then there are passes so careless and lazy that they ought to be served up on a gurney. Papu Gomez stood five yards to Ivan Rakitic’s left yet it was plainly obvious to everyone else in the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan that it was never an option.
Within seven seconds of the ball leaving his foot, Dortmund were 3-1 up. They would have been out of sight if Ivan the terrible hadn’t been substituted minutes later.
Matt Stead
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