In a way, it is the perfect partnership: a team with embedded mental scars carefully cultivated through various degrees of public capitulation; a former coach of Tottenham whose only managerial honour before January was consecutive Put On The Pressure Shields. PSG and Mauricio Pochettino both simultaneously have the potential to be the best yet, at times, the most baffling.
Not even a three-goal head start can quell their inherent anxiety. Barcelona made themselves at home every bit as authoritatively as PSG had at the Nou Camp a month prior, yet their absence of that final decisive touch on Wednesday meant La Remontada: Episode II – Attack of Los Cules was not forthcoming.
It will be of scant consolation to Ronald Koeman that he was absolutely right. “If we take our chances like PSG did in the first leg then nothing is impossible,” he said in midweek, seemingly unaware of how far Ousmane Dembele’s finishing could stretch the realms of believability. He was particularly culpable in the first half but this was on Barcelona as a whole: they scored one goal from ten shots on target; the French champions scored four from nine in Spain. That is toothless against ruthless.
They can at least cling to the best performance of Koeman’s indifferent reign thus far. Barcelona salvaged their reputation in lieu of the tie itself, restoring pride over 90 dominant minutes.
Kylian Mbappe’s late miss summed up PSG’s transformation between games. Everything he touched seemed to be a goal in the first leg yet when presented with a late opportunity after breezing past the hapless Clement Lenglet, he skied his shot in search of a top-corner exclamation mark.
The game needed Lionel Messi to convert that penalty on the stroke of half-time for it to retain its intrigue, for the balance to be tipped ever so slightly closer to Barcelona and away from the hosts. The panic would have set in. The fear might have permeated throughout the team. The flashbacks could have paralysed them.
Yet it is to PSG and Pochettino’s credit that they reacted so well. Keylor Navas rescued them in the opening 45 minutes. The only save he had to make in the second half was from a Sergio Busquets header.
The introduction of Abdou Diallo for Layvin Kurzawa, booked and borked, was integral in actually monitoring Dembele’s movement. It was a curious game plan to rely on him reliving that stoppage-time miss in the 2019 semi-final against Liverpool for the entirety of the first half. The misses that ensued granted Pochettino a reprieve that he maximised.
His post-match declaration that PSG “knew how to suffer” might be most heartening of all. This is the sort of difficult lesson he embraced at Tottenham, the kind of learning experience that fortified him and them, together and apart. PSG took so many lives from Barcelona in the first leg that they could afford to lose nine and still have plenty to spare. They are equal parts dangerous and vulnerable and Pochettino only exemplifies that.
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