Mauricio Pochettino in great discussion with Verratti and Icardi before the start of the second half on Wednesday.
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FRANCK FIFE / AFP
PSG are qualified for the quarter-finals of the Champions League after a sad draw (1-1) against FC Barcelona.
As much the first leg was a feast for the eyes, the return was more than laborious (bordering on professionalism in the first period).
Before the game, however, Pochettino had announced that his team would not refuse the game. So what happened guys?
At the Parc des Princes,
Let's face it: if Mauricio Pochettino's idea was to muddy the waters, the day before the match, about the game plan he intended to put in place against Barça, then the Argentine passed the high test. the hand.
Because between what we saw at the Park on Wednesday, especially in the first period (ohlala this first period…), and what he sold us in conf on Tuesday, it is no longer a world but a galaxy.
What did he promise us that day?
That his team was going to be “fully from the first minute of the game” because “it is very important how we will start the match”, and that she was going to start the return “as if there had been 0- 0 ”on the outward journey.
Words, words and words ...
Or it is simply that, any good leader of man that he is, Pochettino either has not yet found the miracle recipe to avoid the Parisians to falter the calves as soon as the specter of the qualif in quarter - or rather of its elimination - made its appearance.
Still, if Paris delivered in the first leg its most successful match in the knockout phase for a long time, it also offered Wednesday night its worst performance at the same stage of the competition.
Come on, let's say at least for an hour, because not everything was tossed either.
And suddenly the light was (not)
Marquinhos at RMC Sport's microphone: “It was tough.
We knew that this would be another context than the outward journey.
Barcelona are doing good matches at the moment and they played a much better game than at Camp Nou.
They had a lot of courage with an intensive and very high pressing which prevented us from getting the ball out well in the first half.
Our strength is having the ball and creating movement and we struggled to do that.
Sweet understatement.
For 45 minutes, PSG played backwards and was unable to string together three good passes.
While with the speed of a Mbappé and the sense of goal of an Icardi, a single good movement could have allowed the Parisians to exploit the boulevards left behind by a Barcelona team clearly not come to put on defensive efforts.
But to counter-attack, you still have to have the ball.
However, in the first period, the Red and Blue must not have seen the color for more than 5 minutes.
On arrival, over the entire game, it gives the club the worst stat since Opta analyzed the competition (2003-2004 season) with an appalling 27.9% of ball possession.
It is also the lowest percentage for a team on a meeting from Atlético de Madrid (THE gender specialist), against Liverpool, on February 18, 2020 (27.4%).
"Psychologically, it was a kind of test", positive Pochettino
“The first half didn't go as we wanted, we were disappointed.
We suffered a lot.
We were caught up in aggression, we couldn't get our foot on the ball, we also had trouble getting it out, making the first passes ”, noted, like us, Mauricio Pochettino in Zoom-conference after qualifying.
For him, in addition to the intensity of the Barcelona pressing, the answer to this absolute void lies above all in the heads of his players (like, like…): “Psychologically, it was a kind of test.
We talk a lot about the past here.
We gambled too much and not enough thought about the game being too focused on qualifying.
We suffered but we corrected a lot of things in the second half.
I'm happy with that because then we were able to raise our level of play and our aggressiveness.
"
Well, if it wasn't the Wednesday night fever on the pitch in the second period either, let's recognize that there was indeed better.
A little.
And as in the first leg, the change in the face of PSG is most certainly to the credit of the former Spurs manager.
By a shouting, first.
Marquinhos: “It was hot at half-time!
We noticed that we lacked commitment in the defensive phases.
We talked because we saw that we had trouble with their side, it was difficult, we were late, we could not rush them.
We managed better in the second half by putting more commitment.
He lacked commitment and he [Pochettino] told us that.
"
To every thing, porridge is good
By then bringing out a Kurzawa warned in the first period and totally next to his pumps for 45 minutes, for Diallo, “Poché” gave a little consistency to his defensive line and impact in the duels.
Big thumbs up by the way for the former Dortmund, who delivered an XXL performance on Wednesday, like what he showed against Manchester at Old Trafford last December.
If Bernat's return were to drag on, Diallo could quickly become a credible solution on the left in the eyes of the Argentine coach.
We can also greet the change of Draxler - well, the ghost of Draxler's distant cousin, rather -, invisible for an hour, by Di Maria.
And as long as we are there, concomitantly, of Gueye by Danilo Pereira.
All this to say that if everything was far from perfect against Barça, at least Pochettino had the merit of not waiting until the last quarter of an hour to review his plans.
And then this match will also have allowed him to assess the work, mainly psychological, which remains to be done with his group, to make this PSG a machine to win (big) trophies.
So it was not an evening for nothing after all.
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