Leipzig’s coach Julian Nagelsmann was still full of adrenaline that triggers a game. And even if he managed, thanks to a good childhood, to keep his composure: He could not ignore the pithy words he found after the 1-0 defeat at Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday. Because the Dutch referee Danny Makkelie had conditioned the game a bit too much with a more than questionable penalty decision.
“The penalty was a joke!”, Nagelsmann rumbled at Sky, “Something like that at Champions League level, that’s really sad.” But: It didn’t help. With the win, PSG overtook Leipzig in the table. And is now in second place behind leaders Manchester United, level on points with the Leipzigers. Should the direct comparison be decisive, PSG would be ahead of Leipzig – because of the goal scored at the beginning of November at 1: 2 in Leipzig – i.e. away from home. But defeatism would be out of place. Should Leipzig win the last two group games in Istanbul and against Manchester United, the premier class semi-finalist from last season would reach the knockout round again. “That’s right,” said Nagelsmann after calculating the options – and correcting the idea that Leipzig no longer had it in its own hands.
Nevertheless, he was allowed to be annoyed about the decisive scene that happened just nine minutes after the start of the game, after a bad pass by Dayot Upamecano in the build-up game. Nagelsmann said he knew that Upamecano was not allowed to play the ball like that, in other words: in the feet of the opponent, and he started to defend the central defender, who had recently made frequent mistakes. The real problem is that Upamecano offered too few passages, with increased intensity in midfield, Upamecano’s embarrassment would not have been so great. “Completed” the mistake was not Leipzig, but the referee, who made various strange decisions – including mercy in severe attacks by Ander Herrera and substitute Marco Veratti – and just made a serious and wrong penalty decision.
The video referee does not intervene
After Upamecano’s bad pass, the ball got to Ángel Di María. And the Argentine fell as soon as he had entered the penalty area and thought Leipzig’s captain Marcel Sabitzer was nearby. “That was a clear swallow!”, Said Nagelsmann with the expert eye of an ornithologist – and got excited not only about Referee Makkelie, but above all about the apathy of the video referee. “If that’s not a clear mistake, then we can get rid of the video referee … then we’d better leave the referees alone again.” But who knows, Nagelsmann said at Sky: It is possible that the video referee “watched another game” in the scene.
That would not have been understandable at the time of the crime, later it would have been more understandable. Leipzig dominated, but only sporadically created danger; PSG are committed to a defensive game that is not known from teams instructed by coach Thomas Tuchel. Of course there were reasons for this.
“I’m sick of it. I’m sick of it!” Shouts Tuchel to the French press
The Parisians have been walking on sore gums for some time. “The most difficult thing at the moment is to get eleven players together, we have almost a hundred injured players,” said Tuchel. Neymar has zero training rhythm, for the game against Leipzig you had to fit-inject two players, under such circumstances to expect the best PSG is far from reality. Even if he knows that he “rode this horse to death argumentatively,” as he said on Sky, it burst out of him after the insistently complaining questions from the French capital’s press about the quality of PSG’s game. “I’m sick of it. I’m sick of it!”, Shouted Tuchel in crescendo: “When you have the balls, you can ask them this question … My players are dead! Dead! They gave everything. Everything!” But: He had three points, they offer the Champions League finalist last season good prospects of advancing. “We defended with a big heart, always together. We won. I won’t ask for pardon for the win,” said Tuchel, who insisted on his part: his team simply “responded to the demands of the game”.
PSG actually did that, with skill and dedication. The Leipzigers found it difficult to convert their almost overwhelming possession (62 percent) into opportunities. Marcel Sabitzer missed the best opportunities immediately after Neymar’s penalty and Emil Forsberg at the beginning of the second half. On the other hand, there was a solid defensive performance, Neymar, Mbappé and Di María never found space to put the goal of the largely unemployed Peter Gulacsi in a mess. “In the end it would at least have been deserved if we had rewarded ourselves with a draw,” Nagelsmann argued. But the chances of reaching the round of 16 remained intact.
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