• It was certainly not the most flashing rookie of the Parisian summer, but the arrival of Georginio Wijnaldum at PSG was seen as a great coup on paper. 

  • Since then, the player drags his sentence every week and is slow to find the level that was his with the Reds. 

  • Problem of integration in the locker rooms and on the ground, lack of a strict tactical framework, the reasons for this delay in ignition are numerous. 

And suddenly the carriage became a pumpkin. Landed at PSG in general joy, crowned with the status of captain of the Netherlands after a well negotiated Euro and centerpiece of the great Liverpool of Klopp, Georginio Wijnaldum was to be the essential cog that was missing in the Parisian environment to accompany Marco Verratti and Idrissa Gueye. But after three months in the capital, it is clear that the midfielder is only a shadow of himself.

Critics are not long in coming.

The former defender Jean-Luc Arribart, yet a fan of the first hour of the man attacks: "it is his twin brother who has been playing since the start of the season".

Fourteen games played, half as a substitute, an influence on the game close to sea level, pre-industrial period, and a gauge of confidence already dry, it is nothing to say that the beginning of the Parisian adventure of Wij looks like a long and painful ordeal.

A risky Paris

However, the player knew where he was setting foot. In a lively interview given to

L'Equipe in

mid-September, “Gini” confided that he had not received the slightest guarantee on his future playing time. “It is up to me to ensure that I become a key player for the team. Some clubs can make you lots of promises, if you're no good you don't play, and that's okay. There will always be competition in a team like Paris, and that's better. They didn't promise me so much that I was going to be a key player as they did explain how I was going to become, with my qualities, with my experience, an essential part of their project. Further on, he also claimed to be impervious to pressure. Like what the truth of one day is not necessarily that of the next day.

At the end of the line, the consultant at RMC (which broadcasts Leipzig-PSG on Wednesday evening) Emmanuel Petit knows only too well what the Dutchman has been going through since his arrival.

“Signing in Paris at 30 when you're at the top in Liverpool, it was a risky bet.

It was the same when I left Arsenal to go to Barcelona.

I wanted to go to one of the biggest clubs in the world to add a line to my Champions League record, and finally I realized that the grass was not necessarily greener elsewhere.

When you leave a club in which you are extremely fulfilled, that you have credibility both with supporters, managers and teammates, it's difficult to start from scratch elsewhere.

"

A place to find in the very "south-am '" locker room of PSG

Like Petit at the time, Wijnaldum arrived in a locker room filled with stars in which you have to quickly elbow to find your place. However, unlike the reception he received from Parisian supporters, the arrival of Wijnaldum did not only make people happy in the PSG locker room since, in fact, it came to encroach on the territory of 'a Leandro Paredes much appreciated by the huge South American clan. For Jean-Luc Arribart, his mistake was not to immediately get everyone to agree with his level of performance on the pitch.

"If he had struck a big entry blow and directly shown the full extent of his talent, we would have said" there is a new boss in the middle ". Except he missed it. But with players of such quality as there are in the Parisian group, any captain of the Netherlands that he is, even if he comes from Liverpool, the guys no longer regard him as an indisputable holder, they see as a player who will have a hard time winning his place. The look of others, we feel it, and there, he knows that we do not consider him as a pillar of this team, we look at him as a player who is failing at Paris Saint-Germain. "

Except that Wijnaldum, like many others, is an emotional person who builds confidence. “Wijnaldum seems a bit isolated to me, both in the locker room and on the pitch, he has not yet found his place. There are players who go to the essentials to focus on their own performance and there are others, as I was at the time, who need to feel in a human cocoon, who 'there is a good relationship based on trust and honesty and that it is always reciprocal in order to develop good friendships on and off the pitch. I think Wijnaldum needs that right now, ”Petit reflects. In an interview with Dutch media NOS in early October, Gini confirms.

"I can't say I'm completely happy because it's not the situation I expected"

Within PSG, we want to give Georginio Wijnaldum 🇳🇱 time to fully integrate.

When he arrived this summer, he was seen by management as a player who would bring competition to an environment that lacked it.



(THE TEAM)

- Hadrien Grenier (@hadrien_grenier) October 28, 2021

Klopp's frame

vs

Pochettino's bazaar

“Afterwards, we are not in the world of care bears, tempers the 98 world champion. It is up to him to make the efforts to better integrate into the group. He should take the problem backwards and tell himself that once he starts to perform well, the leaders' outlook will change about him. But it's a bit like the snake biting its tail ”. Especially since each time Pochettino gives him a chance, the captain of the Oranje seems totally lost in the (fluctuating) organization set up by the Argentine coach. Box-to-box in the unchanging 4-3-3 of Jürgen Klopp at the Reds, Wijnaldum is "lugged around all the middle positions since he arrived at PSG", regrets the Premier League consultant to Canal +.

“In Paris, we have the impression that the midfielders must give the ball to the attackers who manage between them, analyzes Manu Petit.

In Liverpool, he was constantly involved in attacks, he was constantly on the move, it was a link between defense and attack, in short, he lived in the Klopp collective.

There, we have the feeling that he is confined in a secondary role and that he bridles himself, he has a kind of shyness on the ground that he did not have in Liverpool.

"

Not a lot of jokers in his pocket ...

For the former Parisian midfielder Eric Rabésandratana, we come back again and again to the tactical gloubi-boulga of this PSG without any real guiding ideas or preferential schemes. “In the Netherlands or in Liverpool, it's clear, there is a framework, he knows his role perfectly. In Paris, this is not the case, he happens in a team that is looking for itself, who does not know how it plays, necessarily that impacts its performance. He is a player who needs things well oiled to be able to express his full potential. "

Present alongside Pochettino at a pre-match press conference on Tuesday evening, Wijnaldum did not hesitate to confirm the instability in Paris at the start of the season.

“In Liverpool, we were a team that had been together for five years.

We had our identity, it was different.

Here, the coach prefers when we rotate.

We are not always in the same position, ”he admitted bluntly.

Pochettino grin, swallowing the spike without flinching.

This outpouring of sincerity should not be detrimental to him when it comes to challenging Leipzig.

Indeed, in the absence of Marco Verratti, Wijnaldum should have another chance to prove that Paris was not wrong by going to tear him from Klopp's arms.

It would be a question of not spoiling it this time.

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