It must feel a little odd to be Marco Verratti. He was signed by Paris Saint-Germain in July 2012, an eon in football terms. Verratti was one of the first signings of the Qatari ownership, highly-rated but without an appearance in Italy’s top flight. Even his arrival was overshadowed; Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s signing was announced on the same day.
It has not always been easy in Paris. Verratti’s career has been pockmarked by regular injury, to the extent that he has never started 30 league matches in a single season in his career. There was talk of a move away as early as 2014, with Arsenal linked with a £17m offer. Verratti is the longest-serving player at a club that is able to sign half a team of glamour names over a single summer; it’s easy to get pushed down the queue. He is also an absolutely fabulous holding midfielder.
Nobody said that matches between two geopolitical sport-beasts wouldn’t be entertaining. That’s one of the inevitabilities of hoovering up the best talent in the world when money is no object: games are likely to be of a high quality. If it is unusual for the two preseason favourites for the Champions League to be thrust into the same group, it does give us the luxury of footballing phenoms facing each other without the hyper pressure of a semi-final or final.
This was rollicking fare. It may make no eventual difference to this group – surely these two teams will progress given RB Leipzig’s toils – but we can source joy out of football as pure spectacle as well as crucial contest. Pep Guardiola will be frustrated by the result but buoyed by the general pattern of play. Mauricio Pochettino will be delighted by the recovery after the slip in Belgium. Everyone present will cherish being witness to another majestic Lionel Messi goal.
The first half in particular was a glorious maelstrom of possession play and counter-attacking. Paris Saint-Germain scored early – respect to anyone who picked out Idrissa Gueye as their first goalscorer – but that only invited City to pin them back. That was hardly a disaster for PSG; when you have this strikeforce you are never more than six seconds from causing danger. See the second goal for details.
Anyone who is able to cut through a manic game such as this, bending it to his will, could be considered a spoilsport. Watching both teams take turns to test the mettle of the other was enthralling. But when that party pooper is as calm, composed and technically proficient as Verratti, it creates its own antithetical beauty.
Somewhere along the way (at least before Euro 2020) Verratti became a little too easy to forget. There is no doubt that PSG are an elite team, but their strengths are emphatically individual. For Verratti, a sacrificer rather than a superstar, that means flying under the radar. It’s not that Verratti isn’t exceptional, just that he’s been doing the same things very well at the same club for a long time. At PSG more than at most clubs, it is the new arrivals who hog attention.
On Tuesday evening, Verratti played a game within a game. Each time he received possession in a tight area, Manchester City’s press would surround him, aware that he excels in starting the moves that the headline-makers finish. Without fail, Verratti would turn his back on his opponent, place one leg out in front of him and crouch slightly to secure a low centre of gravity.
After brawn, the beauty. Verratti’s greatest trick is picking a pass – played with various parts of his left or right foot – that finds the teammate who is under the least pressure. It is not always the riskiest pass; that is not the aim. But it’s usually the right one.
If it looks like magic to have a bird’s eye view of the pitch when you are standing on its turf, the answer lies in scanning – constantly moving your eyes before receiving the pass to take a mental photograph of your best option. “Keep your head up and look around before you get the ball. This will help you play a one-touch pass. Football is an aggressive sport – you don’t have time to think,” as Verratti told FourFourTwo in 2017. He has improved further since.
The effect of that repeated trick was that Verratti slowed down the pace of the game, but only when the ball came near him. Elsewhere on the pitch, a dozen different players dashed and darted and more often than not snatched at chances. Bernardo Silva was the most guilty, producing the type of miss that makes Nick Hancock want to release a new DVD.
Paris Saint-Germain have more talented footballers, and certainly more expensive. They have used the wealth of a nation state to sign arguably the best strikeforce in the game’s history. But do they have anyone more important than Verratti, their fourth emergency service? As he was substituted with 12 minutes remaining, saving his legs for the weekend, the Parc des Princes rose as one. Verratti’s impact may often go unsaid. It never goes unnoticed here.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3zQpqow
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