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PSG: how to finally win the Champions League

Obviously, in March 2019, after the quack of a premature elimination in the knockout stages of the Champions League against Manchester United (1-3), PSG would have envied his situation at the end of the Final 8 which ended Sunday in Lisbon. However, the frustrating scenario of the defeat against Bayern Munich in the final (1-0) leaves the Parisians with even stronger regrets and above all an identical question: how to do better?

PSG is certainly not the first club to bow for its first final. Before him, Valencia (2000), Leverkusen (2002), Monaco (2004), Arsenal (2006), Chelsea (2008) and Tottenham (2019) had also missed their first meeting. Only Dortmund (1997) managed to win on their first try. And Neymar, Mbappé and their comrades intend to follow this example.

Health crisis requires, the calendar for this year 2020 sees the resumption of Ligue 1 overlap, even if Paris would like to postpone it to September 13 against OM by postponing its trip to Lens scheduled for Saturday, and the transfer window says summery. Until October 5, Leonardo, the Parisian sporting director, will have to relaunch and deepen the many files that will help to grow the team for which Thomas Tuchel will once again be in charge.

The challenge is not simple because the right to make mistakes is slim. By climbing onto the penultimate step, PSG has approached the greats of Europe. He knows that any other result than a success on May 29, 2021, in Istanbul, would plunge him back into a disappointment that he no longer wants to know.

Mercato: Leonardo to play

Leonardo, the sporting director of PSG, will have to recruit smart for this summer transfer window./LP/Arnaud Journois

For weeks, Leonardo, the sporting director of PSG, has been giving the same indications to the agents with whom he is discussing in view of the transfer market open until October 5: “We are talking again after the end of our journey in the Champions League. “It was very good, until the final, and it will bring back a handful of very useful millions: the PSG will receive at least 120 million euros thanks to the European competition, against 86 million last year.

The payroll of PSG will also be very considerably reduced by the departures of Thiago Silva and Edinson Cavani, the third and fourth salaries of the workforce, as well as those of Thomas Meunier, Eric-Maxim Choupo-Moting and Sergio Rico. But all these departures, added to that of Tanguy Kouassi, created significant needs.

Leo is going to have to play tight. At the end of the match, at the microphone of BT Sport, a media holder of English rights, Thomas Tuchel, the coach of PSG, put pressure on his leaders by calling very clearly for reinforcements, in quantity and quality: “When I see Bayern, he invests and keeps his team. If we want to keep this level, we must use this transfer window and expand the workforce. The season will be very demanding, without a break, after the long cut from the coronavirus. If we want to keep this level, we have to have a very, very strong team. “And to insist once again:” We have a lot of things to do to improve the team and maintain its level. “

Only, PSG still foresees a strong deficit, and even if the financial fair play is lightened this season, Leonardo will have to play tight. “I don’t think there are any big transfers this summer, and yet there would be need for them if PSG wants to stay at the top,” said an agent close to the club. The operations on which the Brazilian leader is working have confirmed this trend in recent weeks. Low-cost transfers, loans with an option to buy à la Icardi… all formulas will be good to avoid excessive spending. It is these limits that make it very difficult for Serbian Lazio Sergej Milinkovic-Savic to arrive in midfield.

Priority over a right side. The priority of Paris is to find a right side. Even in the Paris group after the defeat against Bayern, it was found that the German Thilo Kehrer did not offer enough guarantees at the very high level in this position. Timothy Castagne, the Atalanta Bergamo player (24, valued at € 25m) who also has Premier League touches, is a credible lead. Serious contacts have been made with the Belgian, who Leonardo has liked for a long time. Others were initiated with the Lyonnais Léo Dubois, in the logic of the club to prioritize the players trained in France to meet the UEFA criteria (eight players trained locally in the list of 25 of the Champions League) .

The defensive midfielder position is once again at the center of Parisian interests. Thomas Partey (Atlético de Madrid), still pleases but is expensive. Tanguy Ndombele, in difficulty at Tottenham, has never hidden his interest in Paris, but this file has not been reactivated so far.

He is looking for one player per row. Apart from these two positions, Leonardo will look for one player per row. He needs a second guard. Sergio Rico formalized his departure yesterday. Alphonse Areola, who would see himself in England where he has a house, could be the subject of interest from Rennes in the event of the departure of Edouard Mendy and should not stay anyway to play the linings of Navas. An experienced fifth central defender would not be a luxury (Marquinhos, Kimpembe, Diallo, Kehrer). Icardi’s mishap and Thomas Tuchel’s requests also suggest that an offensive player will strengthen the workforce. In addition to center-forward profiles, Leonardo is studying that of versatile attacking midfielders, with once again a look at French players.

On the departure side, the biggest is done with the end of the contract. Juan Bernat’s situation remains to be monitored, since PSG cannot get him extended. The club is pushing hard, too, to make Julian Draxler leave one year from the end of his contract, but he is still happy in Paris.

Thomas Tuchel will have to reinvent himself again

Thomas Tuchel must find the words to re-mobilize his group for the next Champions League./LP
Thomas Tuchel must find the words to re-mobilize his group for the next Champions League./LP

He had followed in his footsteps in Mainz, then succeeded him at Borussia Dortmund. The procession stopped Sunday in Lisbon. This time, Thomas Tuchel did not follow in Jurgen Klopp’s footsteps. A year after the coronation of Liverpool from his false twin, the PSG coach has not been able to register his name in the Champions League.

Twenty-three years after the feat of Ottmar Hitzfeld, the last coach to have led a club (Editor’s note: Borussia Dortmund) who was playing his very first final for the supreme title, Tuchel broke his teeth on the last step. Like the others ! From Cuper’s Valencia (2000), Topmöller’s Leverkusen (2002), to Deschamps’ Monaco (2004), Wenger’s Arsenal (2006), Grant’s Chelsea (2008) or Pocchettino’s Tottenham (2019 ), not a “rookie” has brought home the cup since 1997.

As a site manager. In the absence of the “Saint-Thomas” costume, which a historic success would have enabled him to wear on Sunday evening at the Luz stadium, it is rather in a worksite manager’s outfit that Tuchel will therefore begin the new exercise. In addition to the words and the springs which will re-inflate a group bruised by the terrible disappointment, Tuchel will also have to find the formula which will allow Paris to come back stronger on the European scene and to climb, finally, the ultimate summit separating it still from the world of giants. “It is necessary to keep this state of mind and this mentality, but it is also necessary to create a strong group”, explained the German on Sunday, aware that some gaps still took his team away from the level of this “Kolossal Bayern” sacred for the sixth time.

For his third season at the head of PSG, Tuchel will therefore have no other choice but to renew himself and develop his status as “fusball besessener” (obsessed with the game) that he is given across the Rhine. Having known how to moderate this rigidity that accompanied him in the Bundesliga, stop wanting at all costs to impose his truth and especially close his eyes to certain behaviors of his stars, allowed him to lead Paris to his first Champions League final.

He must put his claw down. “In a workforce where there are so many virtuosos, the whole could be dissonant if everyone played their score,” said Patrick Guillou, Bundesliga specialist on BeIN Sports. Tuchel’s strength lies in having found the right management to play his orchestra in unison. “It is clear that this was not enough to touch the Grail and that it will take something more than leaving the keys to the truck to Neymar and Mbappé, to see Paris try its luck again next year. So now is the time for the German technician to demonstrate, as assured by Polo Breitner, author of the biography “The Tuchel Enigma”, “that his tactical palette is undoubtedly much wider than that of Klopp. “Because the one who also officiates on RMC Sport nuance. “For now, I have not seen the Tuchel brand at PSG, he slips. In any case, not the one that the German had asked about Dortmund 2015-2016 and which forced everyone to have fun. “

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