PSG demise a lesson in the corrupting effect of money and arrogance

Agony for PSG players as Manchester United celebrate a famous win in Paris.


Football still, it turns out, has the power to fight back. Money is a lot of things but it isn’t quite everything, not yet.
Although before we get carried away, it should be acknowledged that it really is a lot of things, most things even, almost everything. The leagues of Italy and France are a walkover yet again. Spain and Germany will probably have very familiar champions. So distorted has the modern view become that not only are Ajax, grandees of the Dutch game, transformed into plucky giant-killers, but somehow Manchester United can be cast as improbable outsiders. It was a great week for the puckish charms of football and its ability to confound hubris but nobody should kid themselves: it’s losing the war against greed.
Get in there, Fred! Ole’s carefree outsiders leave PSG in the dust

And yet Paris Saint-Germain’s demise was still an extraordinary spectacle, a lesson in the corrupting effect of money and arrogance. There have been signs this season that Thomas Tuchel is beginning to transform them into a proper side, not just a team that can perform their party pieces while dominating Ligue Un, but one that can actually compete with the elite. The difference between the shameful display at Anfield, when they were extremely fortunate to lose only 3-2, to the first leg at Old Trafford was vast.
It probably helped that Neymar was missing. The Brazilian is, of course, a supremely gifted footballer, but he is also a master of self-indulgence who keeps on costing his teams trophies. When he is there, there is no guarantee of tactical coherence and while teams packed with gifted players can get away that – as Real Madrid keep proving in Europe – it is a major hindrance. Even against Napoli in the group stage (twice), PSG were fortunate.
The qualities that had made PSG effective in the first leg were apparent in the opening half-hour on Wednesday. Ángel Di María is arguably the best in the world in transition, in knowing when to carry the ball and when and to whom to release it. His link up with Juan Bernat devastated Eric Bailly, cast in the unfamiliar role of right-back until injury did what Ole Gunnar Solskjær would surely soon have done anyway and ended his night nine minutes before half-time. Marquinhos and Marco Verratti snapped and snarled around midfield. Kylian Mbappé is terrifyingly quick