The Neymar team, or the Kylian Mbappe team? If Pep Guardiola were searching for a derisory nickname for Paris Saint-Germain ahead of Manchester City’s Champions League semi-final, he would be hard-pushed to reduce Mauricio Pochettino’s side to their eye-watering array of superstar attackers.
Pochettino is no longer the have-not, drudging outside the mansions of the wealthy and peering enviously through shop windows. When he found himself rubbing shoulders with Guardiola in England, it was easy to consider these two disciples of Bielsa as being cut from entirely different cloths.
It was a rivalry born in Catalonia from the very beginning, when Espanyol’s minnows shocked Lionel Messi, Xavi and co at Camp Nou. The first time Guardiola had been humbled at home, and all by a rookie manager who had never previously won a game.
All the more infuriating it was then, when the City boss later attempted to minimise Pochettino’s transformative work at Tottenham Hotspur to creating “the Harry Kane team”.
It was a jibe the Argentine considered “disrespectful” and “sad”. “When he was at Barca, I never said the Messi team,” he lashed back.
Others did, though, and it is the shadow of Messi which still dangles over Guardiola’s European prestige. The Champions League is the one trophy he has not won at the Etihad and it is the one immovable blockage on his path to justifying Gary Neville’s praise as “the greatest manager of all time”.
Conquering Europe without Messi would be all the more impressive given that first, City must overcome the two stars of this season’s continental calendar. Kylian Mbappe has eight goals in the competition so far – including a hat-trick against Barcelona – and Neymar six. Moise Kean, Angel Di Maria and Marquinhos have all weighed in too, but it is the two forwards on whom PSG’s campaign is resting.
PSG sit second in their domestic league, one point behind Lille, and doubt has already been cast upon the former Spurs manager’s job if he does not go one better than Thomas Tuchel managed in Europe last season.
If anyone thinks he is capable of doing that, it will be Guardiola. Though there were other instances when they butted heads in the Premier League – Pochettino insisted his words had been twisted after he claimed his counterpart ought to show more “humility” – there were plenty of compliments too.
When it was put to Guardiola that Spurs (at that time) boasted one of the best managers in England, he batted away the insufficient tribute: “He’s one of the best managers in the world.”
The feel-good story of Pochettino’s return to the top of the football tree, together with the effervescent brilliance of his two top scorers, has made PSG the poster boys of this year’s Champions League. At least City face them on the back of winning their annual League Cup, as John Stones and Ederson return having missed out at Wembley.
The quadruple dream is no more, but one trophy is in the bag, with that straightforward triumph at the national stadium seeing them overtake Spurs as England’s fifth most successful club.
It’s the Champions League which is of paramount importance to Pochettino, particularly if the Ligue 1 title slips away. Still, it means just as much, if not more, to Guardiola, for whom the league is never really enough.
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from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3xttOdj
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