Istanbul (AFP)

Paris won ... but is not at the party.

PSG beat Basaksehir (2-0) on Wednesday in Istanbul in the Champions League, but lost their superstar Neymar, who came out injured early in the game.

The Parisians, very clumsy in the face of dangerous Turks against, found the flaw on a corner from Kylian Mbappé, pushed to the bottom by a header from Moise Kean (64th).

And the Italian, again, offered himself a double (79th), in the game this time, on a new pass from Mbappé, on the ground.

Kean, arrived at the end of the transfer market, perfectly controlled the ball and crucified goalkeeper Mert Günok to score ... his second consecutive double, after that inflicted on Dijon in the French Championship.

But if PSG, beaten at the opening by Manchester United (2-1), avoids the humiliation of a second poor performance against the theoretically weakest team in Group H, this success looks like a victory at the Pyrrhus, with the loss of Neymar in the first period.

- Concern for Neymar -

The Brazilian came off the pitch shortly before the 20th minute holding his left thigh.

He returned for a few minutes again, his thigh bandaged, before resigning himself to leaving his place to Pablo Sarabia (26th).

This is already the third absence of the season for + Ney +, after the coronavirus at the start of the season and a suspension in Ligue 1 after his red card against Marseille.

And a hell of a tile for coach Thomas Tuchel, whose workforce undermined by absences (Marco Verratti, Mauro Icardi, Leandro Paredes, Julian Draxler ...) struggles to cope with the calendar, with a match every four days.

In the midst of the diplomatic crisis between France and Turkey, with Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Recep Tayyip Erdogan at daggers drawn around many points of dispute, the match was not punctuated by incidents on or off the pitch.

But for the first C1 meeting in its short history, the Fatih Terim stadium in Istanbul did not offer an unforgettable spectacle worthy of the great European Cup.

The 150 or so people authorized - health crisis oblige - to take place in boxes, in the middle of stands furnished with large Turkish flags, witnessed a lot of clumsiness on both sides.

- Tactical puzzle -

In attack, the vice-champion of Europe lacked precision, as evidenced by a big failure of Kylian Mbappé (71st) against Mert Günok or an off-target shot from Pablo Sarabia (88th) at the conclusion of a great collective action with Mbappé and Kean.

The Parisians only scored one shot in the first period, and four throughout the game, as much as their opponents.

And in the middle, the sentinel positioning of Captain Marquinhos, a big bet for coach Thomas Tuchel, has not erased the recurring problems of PSG in construction.

The Brazilian missed his few chances with a header (4th, 23rd) on set pieces.

Parisian opportunities often came from defenders, side Layvin Kurzawa (32nd, 33rd) and Alessandro Florenzi (29th, 31st, 49th).

Mbappé, who turns the heads of defenders in the French Championship, had to wait until the end of the match to finally overwhelm a defense that has long muzzled him.

And even leading to the score, the Parisians remained exposed to the cons of the "Owls", led by their brilliant Bosnian captain Edin Visca who obtained several good opportunities: a shot slightly to the right of the frame (15th), a shot too soft after a nice cross (50th) or a powerful shot (56th) countered by Keylor Navas.

But the Turkish champion, who is playing his first C1, was too imprecise in the last gesture to open his goal counter.

And points.

© 2020 AFP