PARC DES PRINCES — This was Pep Guardiola’s worst nightmare, not just a defeat for his brittle Manchester City but a dismantling of the tentative progress of recent weeks.
As Paris Saint-Germain’s coaching staff and players hared onto the field to celebrate a fourth and fatal goal, the Catalan looked crestfallen. Try as he might, he just can not find the answers.
City are in big trouble now as hey sit out of the top 24. But of more concern to Guardiola will be the way his side folded in the face of a PSG second-half onslaught.
Nothing worked: not a defence that creaked against pace, not a midfield that looked disregulated or a forward line that vanished in a disastrous second half. In biblical rain in the French capital any pretensions that City are back to their best were swept away.
Credit to the home side, who were fantastic. The Parc des Princes remains a strange place to watch football – still a bit of a grubby eighties throwback despite the lavish Qatari glow up.
Now they have a team to match that strange vibe, a blend of the final remnants of their shimmering but ill-starred Galatico era and a new, younger generation who give them an air of chaos and unpredictability.
Take Bradley Barcola, for example. More than anyone he dragged this game back into thrilling, chaotic uncertainty in the second half having floated in and out of proceedings in the first. Inconsistency is a small price to pay for that kind of genius.
Guardiola looked like he hated every minute of it. He glowered through the first half and they weren’t even that bad.
But my how they still miss Rodri, sat in the stands here. Without their metronome in midfield there is a glaring lack of protection for the back four.
The locals sniffed blood early. Just 11 minutes were on the clock when Ruben Dias saw yellow for crudely checking Achraf Hakimi’s run. It was the first clanging of alarm bells but it was to grow so much louder.
That noise became a crescendo just before half-time when Hakimi lashed home to cap a slick, speedy counter that sliced through City’s defence. He was offside – by inches – but City had been served notice and Guardiola had seen enough.
Rico Lewis and Jack Grealish were summoned at the break with Dias – who had looked every inch like a player still feeling his way back to fitness – among those hooked.
The impact from both players was immediate and disparate. Grealish scored one, hammering home a close range volley, and made one for Erling Haaland within eight minutes. But Lewis hardly inspired confidence in a reshuffled back four and the two-goal lead felt like a mirage.
The home side’s fightback was Barcola’s doing. The winger’s lightning run teed-up substitute Ousmane Dembélé for the first before his quick reflexes swept a rebound past Ederson to restore parity. It felt like frantic, knockout football and that suited the home side so much more.
Guardiola’s gambit was to bring back John Stones to restore aura but it backfired, his number five missing a header to allow Joao Neves to nod home a third and swipe City’s Champions League destiny out of their own hands, before Goncalo Ramos added insult to injury with the fourth deep into injury-time.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Man City torn apart by PSG to leave Champions League hopes hanging by a thread )
Also on site :
- Education Ministry rehabilitates 70 schools since Assad regime’s fall
- In the wake of Myanmar quake
- The $6 billion Vatican Bank was beset by scandals, disastrous investments—and ties to the mafia. How Pope Francis tried to fix it