For PSG, it works in London against Arsenal in the Champions League – Liberation

Ultradominating, then resistant, then quiet manager, Paris-SG left from London with a success (1-0) amply deserved against an arsenal team which may have underestimated, as crazy as it may seem, a training that had landed across the Channel with the scalps of Liverpool and Aston Villa on the belt. The passivity of the Arsenal players in the first period, then the majestic slowness with which the English coach, Mikel Arteta, made replacements, tell that. The Parisians were more intense, more courageous, more concerned: they are a hundred minutes from a European final.

If each match is an adventure, those of Paris-Saint-Germain have been marked out for months. The club coach, Luis Enrique, had explained things as follows: when the champions of France evolve blocks, in front of their goal (defensively if we want), the opponents engage and leave in their back spaces that the Parisian attackers, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Ousmane Dembélé or Achraf Hakimi, devour to the full teeth. PSG is more dangerous offensively as well. So, low block? Hey no, because the defenders of PSG (Pacho, Marquinhos, Hakimi) have trouble under pressure. And weaken the team in this configuration. Even if it means being less comfortable offensively, they must have the ball and play with the opponent. They therefore need control of the ball. What is played out in the impact, the fight, then in technical quality: the first period of Parisians was therefore exemplary twice, making the Gunners Spectators of the match as surely as those who saw this from the stands. The thesis of the psychological boxwood after the early goal scored by Dembélé (0-1, 4th) does not hold: the English have already been juggled upstream of the goal, 27 assists and a minute ten seconds before the strike of the French international.

In the real one, João Neves and his teammates bit the ball everywhere, demolishing their adversaries (four out of five duels won in the first half hour, a crazy proportion) and putting in orbit a kvaratskhelia Luciferien, decisive passer for Dembélé and who would not have stolen a penalty (16th) after having once again martyred Jurriën Timber vis à vis. And if the Arsenal players have rallied the break and lemons with a pawn of delay and not three or four, they owe it to their pride, the only quality – a minimum – that they were able to put in the balance to hold the scoring. Gianluigi Donnarumma interposed well on a duel with Myles Lewis-Skelly just before half-time (45th) but we would swear that a possible goal will not have resisted video refereeing since the English defender seemed slightly offside.

We quickly changed from the virtual to the real at the return of the locker room, Mikel Merino being refused a goal of the head for offside after a little stroke of Var (47th). A monstrous, Donnarumma judgment in front of Leandro Trossard who presented himself on his own in front of the Parisian goal (56th) anyway indicates that the wind turned, which the public – in the great English tradition – had breathed before everyone else, in the few minutes preceding the break. The case is then exciting. Marquinhos and others must start another match, very different from the first. They have to break the pace and not accelerate it, undergo behind and not rotate the ball at the opponent, take crumbs offensively while the Parisians were shaped during the initial half hour. Check Trossard while Dembélé made the music before him. Play without the athletic ascendant.

It’s football too. And the Parisians were just as remarkable in the exercise, just leaving Donnarumma to pick a few easy air balloons and roll his big eyes. The first English change only occurred in the 80th minute of the match, a sign that Artata found nothing to complain about the individual and collective performance of its players. Little threatened, the Parisians were however the most dangerous in the final, Bradley Barcola (84th) and Gonçalo Ramos (86th) failing to dig a abyss between the two teams before the return match, in eight days at the Parc des Princes.