the dangerous game of PSG in the Champions League – Libération

The capital club, beaten on Tuesday November 26 by Bayern Munich, has only four points after five days in the premier competition of European club football. Coach Luis Enrique is under pressure.

“A l’attaque!” Whatever we think of the character, we cannot blame Parisian coach Luis Enrique for lack of inspiration in his media expression. A few minutes after the defeat on Tuesday, November 26 (0-1) against Bayern in Munich, the third in five days of the new format Champions League, the former Spanish coach really hit where it hurts. With three goals scored since the start of the competition, Paris-SG leaves only four teams out of 36 behind it in the ranking of the number of goals scored. And three (Shakhtior Donetsk, Bologna and Sturm Graz) of them had one more match to play this Wednesday, November 27 evening.

However, it is better to joke about it. Twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh three days from the end in a competition which casts an immensely wide net (the first 24 are qualified), the capital club is under tension. And the feedback from the locker room on Tuesday reflected a secret concern. “Physically, [les joueurs du Bayern] were more ready than us, supported Captain Marquinhos. In the first half, it was a close match and we took a few risks.” Way to let go of the fact that the Parisians were stepped on in the fight. And that the tactical thread is thin, the team exposing itself more than reason to compensate for its offensive impotence. Also a sign that Luis Enrique is rolling the dice.

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“After the match, we said to ourselves that we all had to stay together, testified midfielder João Neves, used in a somewhat baroque position as playmaker. I think the red card [reçu par Ousmane Dembélé à la 56e] penalized us a lot in the match. We did what we could. Nobody points fingers at anyone. We will fight together.” Usual in the context, calls for unity should not be neglected either. In a crisis situation, players have a natural tendency to look at what their neighbor has not done well. The results not validating the work of Luis Enrique, the latter’s aura could also fade, especially since he invented an additional problem: that of the goalkeeper.

Already sidelined against Toulouse (3-0) in the league on Friday November 22, Gianluigi Donnarumma remained on the bench in Munich, replaced by the Russian Matvey Safonov. Which is guilty on the German goal, a corner poorly rejected by the Parisian goalkeeper then catapulted with a header into the back of the net by the Korean Kim Min-Jae. On the scale of a Parisian team whose strengths are difficult to pin down, Donnarumma is a sure bet, 70 caps with the Italian selection at 25, a European champion title in 2021 at the end of a competition where he was voted best player by UEFA.

And Luis Enrique took the risk of destabilizing him, for the benefit of Safonov that Paris-SG brought in this summer from the modest Krasnodar club. And which, for the moment, has not made anyone climb the curtains, including in the sectors identified as weak points for the Italian (football, aerial outputs when the ball sails from right to left). Between now and the Salzburg match in two weeks, against a team which gives the impression of dying in this Champions League (0-4 against Brest, 0-5 Tuesday at Leverkusen), the pressure will mount very strongly. And the impression of general self-effacement (as long as we don’t fall into the trap of Luis Enrique’s outbursts at a press conference), this timidity that we feel in the heart of the team when it plays on the European front, is not the most reassuring.