PARC DES PRINCES — Newcastle will not be the first team nor the last to try and work out how to stop Kylian Mbappe. No one has quite worked it out, although funnily enough Newcastle’s owners might have had the best idea so far: a £1bn contract to play in the Saudi Pro League. That would certainly have Champions League defenders breathing a sigh of relief.
But Eddie Howe and co would do well not to let their scouting report be dominated by talk of Mbappe, whose obvious weapons of speed and skill are not the only ones in the French side’s armoury.
Here are five things Newcastle will have to be aware of ahead of PSG’s visit to Tyneside:
St James’ will be electric, but PSG won’t be phased
Paris is not a city defined by its football club. Why would it be, you might suppose?
Although Parc des Princes might lack the centre-of-attention feel of St James’ Park, they know how to put on a show on the big nights. The PA system is turned up to 11 (and yet the stadium announcer insists on screaming into the microphone) and the deafening Tribune Auteuil barely paused for breath throughout the 90 minutes.
It will be the first Champions League match at St James’ Park for 20 years, and the fans will doubtless sing their hearts out. It may spur on their own fans, but PSG are no strangers to a cacophonous atmosphere. Against Newcastle may be different, and the occasion may get to Luis Enrique’s side, but noise alone is unlikely to be a problem.
Mbappe vs the world
Mbappe spent most of the game on the left-hand side, the position that gives him the most options when running at defenders. He was clearly trying to isolate Niklas Sule, a 6ft 5in front door of a defender, not as fleet of feet as many. It looked like it could be a long night for Sule and those who tried to offer him assistance when, within the first five minutes, Mbappe had beaten two defenders with one move and then drawn a foul from another out on the left.
But PSG’s talisman cut a relatively isolated figure for the rest of the game as Emre Can urged his team to cut supply to the world’s most feared forward off at source. They were not wholly successful but this is clearly an attacking unit still adjusting to life after Lionel Messi and Neymar.
The fear Newcastle might have is that Mbappe once again might go in search of his preferred target, which in Howe’s back four must surely be Dan Burn. It would mean playing on the right, but he is just as dangerous on that flank and did spend time there during the first half.
Forget Vitinha’s loan spell at Wolves
It probably won’t be hard for most Newcastle fans to forget Vitinha’s year-long loan spell to Wolves, where Porto were forced to offload him for a year in 2020-21 to comply with FFP regulations.
The highlight of his time at the club was a 35-yard screamer in the FA Cup against non-league side Chorley – “an absolutely dire match where he provided the one spark,” remembers Rich Hobbs of the Wolves Fancast – and the club did not activate the buy option. It was clear to those watching that he had technical ability though, and so it was little surprise when he turned up at PSG a year later, having cost them £35m.
And he looked a player who might cost a lot more one day as he drifted in and out of central midfield, explored the space between the lines and filled the many holes created by Mbappe’s gravitational pull.
He nearly opened the scoring too when he was given far too much time on the edge of the box by Can, Dortmund’s main shielding midfielder, and hit the inside of the box but somehow saw the ball bounce clear. He did get an assist that effectively put the game to bed though when he refrained from shooting again, instead breaking into the box, freezing Nico Schlotterbeck and having the presence of mind to lay it off for Achraf Hakimi.
With Joelinton unlikely to be fit, it will probably fall to the likes of Sean Longstaff to stop him making too much hay in between defence and midfield, where Newcastle have shown a propensity to get stretched. It will not be easy.
Be incisive on the counter
With one 0-0 draw under their belt already – but one they were arguably lucky to escape the San Siro with – Newcastle might think they would happily take another when PSG come to visit. But there are reasons the Magpies can get at the French champions.
For starters, Nice beat them 3-2 less than a week ago, and Dortmund had more than one good chance to get one past Gianluigi Donnarumma.
Both Nice and Dortmund tried to play on the counter-attack with varying levels of success, but it is easy to see why. PSG’s front three show almost no interest in covering back when the ball does break, and with an offensive 2-3-5 structure, it can be easy to turn the ball over and quickly create a four-on-two situation. Dortmund lacked a passer good enough in midfield to set the likes of Karim Adeyemi free. His speed and PSG’s vulnerability to it should be noted, and Newcastle can look to Sandro Tonali or Bruno Guimaraes to try and exploit it.
The French side also do not mind overcommitting bodies forward, often finding themselves at best man-to-man in defence. At one point, when scores were still level, Milan Skriniar was the last man, standing seven yards inside the Dortmund half.
Get at them in wide areas
Achraf Hakimi, and to a lesser extent Lucas Hernandez, are full-backs who like more of the full and less of the back. Hakimi often left the other defenders as a lop-sided three as he gallivanted forwards, and was rewarded with the second goal, but also left a large gap at right-back.
Anthony Gordon, one of Newcastle’s best players this season, will be licking his lips at the prospect of running full speed into that space and driving at Marquinhos, Danilo or Skriniar, depending on who gets the nod at centre-half. Certainly, there is little chance of Ousmane Dembele or Mbappe sprinting back to help cover, and Vitinha or Warren Zaire-Emery’s willingness to defend from midfield looks limited.
It should be said that this team are a work in progress. You could see Enrique urging his front three to press when Dortmund tried to play out from the back, and they did begrudgingly do so – but he also seemed to have to debate with Mbappe to do it at other times. For a manager with so much of Barcelona and modern Spain in his footballing DNA, there is still a long way down the road for him to go at PSG. Newcastle will hope he has not made much headway by the time he arrives in the north east.
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