Kylian Mbappé had always looked the player most likely to break the deadlock and, sure enough, in the fourth minute of injury time, it was his moment of brilliance that gave Paris Saint-Germain a 1–0 win over Real Madrid in the first leg of the Champion League last 16. As Lionel Messi missed a penalty it had threatened to be a frustrating evening for PSG, which had dominated the game, before the 23-year-old, who has been strongly linked with a move to Real Madrid in the summer, cut between Éder Militão and Lucas Vázquez and slid his shot under Thibaut Courtois.
Rather than being more of the same for PSG, another opportunity missed for a club that is haunted by its failure to win the Champions League since it was taken over by Qatari Sports Investments in 2011, this suddenly became one of the more significant results in the club’s history. Madrid will be rather more proactive in the Bernabeu bit that in turn may create more space for PSG’s forward line so it will not spend its night trying to thread passes through a massed rearguard.
And Madrid will be without Casemiro and Ferland Mendy, both of whom picked up bookings that will incur suspensions. The worries about PSG’s slight lack of creativity, its failure to create more than a couple of clear-cut chances, can be largely forgotten in light of that winner.
In part, it’s arguable, that sense of predictability was caused by Neymar being restricted to 18 minutes off the bench as he recovers from an ankle injury. As so often when he is absent, though, it was hard to avoid the thought that PSG benefited, at least from a structural point of view. With Neymar, that would have been no role for Ángel Di María, who was a key presence against his former club, working ferociously hard and linking intelligently to midfield.
Madrid found it very hard to get into the game as PSG dominated possession. The two PSG fullbacks, Achraf Hakimi and Nuno Mendes, were both able to play high, as they needed to given the narrow 4-3-1-2 shape. This in turn meant Karim Benzema was often left isolated as Vinícius Júnior and Marco Asensio spent most of the game tracking back.
Dani Carvajal had a miserable time against the pace and trickery of Mbappé and, less excusably, was regularly caught deep of the rest of the defensive line, which led to the only shot on target of the first half as Mbappé, for once, ran onto a ball over the top but struggled to control the bounce and struck his shot into Courtois. Messi equalled Thierry Henry’s record of having missed a record five penalties in the Champions League.
Messi’s involvement in a central role behind the two forwards had been spasmodic until then, but suddenly he was charging everywhere, as though determined to make amends for missing the penalty, on one occasion nicking the ball from Leandro Paredes just as he was about to shoot. He has scored five times in the Champions League already for PSG, but it was Mbappé who presented the far greater threat against Madrid.
PSG looked far more dangerous down the left than the right, and it was no great surprise just after the hour when Mbappé was tripped by Carvajal. Lionel Messi’s penalty, though, was poor, and was saved by Courtois. The Belgian had emerged as Madrid’s key player, making an excellent low save to his left early in the second half to deny Mbappé.
This was a far more coherent PSG performance than it had produced in either game against Manchester City in the group stage, even the home game that it won 2–0, and whether by accident or design, Madrid ended up playing extremely deep. That, inevitably, led to questions about whether its tactics had been influenced by the abolition of the away goals rule—as though teams playing Mbappé previously had pushed high up the pitch. All the statistical evidence from more than half a century of its implementation, anyway, is that the rule, far from encouraging away sides to attack, actually made home teams more defensive.
Far more significant to who goes through is how PSG reacts to coming under pressure as it inevitably will in the second leg on March 9. That has always been the doubt: With the vaunted front three of Mbappé, Neymar and Messi, can it find a defensive structure to thwart better sides when they attack them?
Tonight did not answer that, but it did give PSG a lead to protect in Madrid.
