Welcome to the European Super League. PSG versus Manchester City, two clubs yanked from ordinary pasts into extraordinary presents by the incredible wealth of owners with geopolitical motives. Lucky them. And lucky us, once we reach the inevitable accommodation with political and ethical concerns and see only the riches on the pitch.
Champions League victory for both clubs is the dreamscape, validating the billions spent and projecting positive PR for the mother countries. We fall into line, as they knew we would, because the likes of Neymar, Kylian Mbappe, Marco Veratti, Marquinhos et al for PSG and Kevin De Bruyne, Phil Foden, Raheem Sterling, Ilkay Gundogan, etc, relieve us of our critical faculties, desensitise us to the less appealing features of club ownership by state concerns.
PSG have the global power players, the killer out-balls of Mbappe and Neymar, blended into a more cohesive whole under the aegis of Mauricio Pochettino. City have the systematic heft, a machine-like quality melded to a beautiful aesthetic that is even more dangerous for its unrelenting nature.
Pochettino’s old outfit Spurs were ground into the Wembley turf in the Carabao Cup final, an experience that left a player of Heung-Min Son’s quality in tears. Before that Aston Villa were made to pay horribly for scoring inside a minute in the Premier League fixture.
What City have yet to achieve is to hit the same imperious stride in the Champions League. This is what Pep Guardiola is paid millions to achieve, the world’s pre-eminent football architect building a money-no-object construct at the summit of the game.
How to watch PSG vs Man City in UK
- Match: Champions League semi-final first leg
- Date: Wednesday 28 April
- Kick-off time: 8pm BST
- Stadium: Parc des Princes
- TV channel: BT Sport 2 from 7pm BST
- Stream details: BT Sport app
Pochettino is a fan and relishing the opportunity to test his mettle against the best at a club with the muscle to back him. “It is not a personal battle, it is Paris St Germain against Manchester City. Pep is one of the best, if not the best, coach in the world. I admire not only his titles but the legacy that he is building in football.”
Pochettino’s removal from a Spurs team he had led to the Champions League final six months earlier looks even more the howler it did then. Spurs matched Liverpool step for step two years ago with a squad that had none of the investment poured into Anfield. It was a mark of genius to maintain a Champions League presence under financial constraints imposed by a chief executive delivering a new stadium.
Pochettino deserved better than the flick when the inevitable reaction to the narrow defeat to Liverpool set in amidst a backdrop of nil squad renewal. It cost him a year on the sidelines watching Jose Mourinho deconstruct his career’s best work. All behind him now, of course. Pochettino is returned to centre of things whilst Mourinho attends to his privet hedge in TV commercial land.
Guardiola’s failure to regain the Champions League he won twice with Barcelona is football’s great anomaly and points to the role of chance in a game of variables. His Bayern Munich team were good enough to win it, as City have been.
City were ambushed by drawing domestic opponents, Liverpool and Spurs, in the quarter-finals of 2018 and 2019. In the context of European competition in the knock-out stages, those matches acquired a degree of jeopardy absent in the Premier League.
An irresistible Liverpool clubbed City in a frenzied first half of the opening leg at Anfield. Spurs rode their luck when Sterling was denied what looked a peach of a winner in the dying seconds of the second leg at the Etihad. In the pre-VAR age City would have advanced.
Against Lyon last year Guardiola somehow overplayed his hand with an unusual selection that backfired, much as the eight changes did in the FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea. Beyond that only the preposterous contention that City are underdogs in this environment offends.
“Everyone is fit, ready and happy. We are all grateful to have this opportunity,” he said. “At some clubs this is normal. Some have many Champions Leagues, but for us it is new and we are grateful for it. It is incredible, it is so nice to go to Paris.”
The man doth protest too much me thinks. Like Hamlet’s old lady, Pochettino won’t be fooled by hogwash as transparent as that.
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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2QAEbLG
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