Dominant but ineffective, Paris SG suffered a defeat which hurt Lisbon against Sporting Portugal (2-1) on Tuesday in the Champions League, and sees its place in the top 8 of the league phase threatened.
With 13 points, and the concomitant victory of Real Madrid and Tottenham, PSG fell to provisional 5th place before Wednesday’s matches – closely followed by Sporting. The Newcastle reception in eight days will decide whether the Parisians will avoid the round-trip barrage in February.
Tuesday at the José Alvalade stadium, we thought we were 15 months back, when PSG had a series of sterile dominations before finally cracking against a supposedly weaker team.
Lisbon striker Luis Suarez first ignited the crowd – who hardly needed it – by unleashing a surgical strike to deceive Lucas Chevalier (74th). A poorly pushed corner then an unlucky deviation were fatal to the Parisian rearguard, who had been intractable until now. Then he hit a returning post after skillfully catching a ball pushed back by Lucas Chevalier after a strike from Francisco Trincao (90th). The Parisian goalkeeper is not going to put an end to debates about his level with this kind of action…
Paris, however, thought they had done the hardest part when Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, fresh off the bench, where he had been surprisingly left at kick-off by his coach, immediately put his team back on track, after the opening score, with a splendid curling shot towards the opposite corner (79th).
The equalizer more reflected the nature of the match. But that was before breaking down just before added time. Luis Enrique and his troops still have a lot of work to do before being launched as powerfully as in early 2025.
Three goals disallowed
However, for a good part of the match, PSG applied pressure with an intensity rarely seen this season. Ousmane Dembélé applied his coach Luis Enrique’s instructions to lead the attack on the ball and it was impressive to see, giving this PSG 2026 the air of PSG 2025. But the last third of the match was much less controlled.
And above all, inefficiency in construction and finishing was problematic. Paris struggled to create real chances, its combinations near the surface proving too tender and telephonic for the Lisbon defense, and its strikes too imprecise: Fabián Ruiz (6th), Dembélé (13th, 29th, 43rd, 61st), Senny Mayulu (15th), Vitinha (20th), Bradley Barcola (25th) brought a very relative danger.
And no less than three PSG goals were rightly refused, respectively for a fault by Mayulu on the recovery (31st) and two offsides (or on the first action a hand, or even a fault on the goalkeeper, referee Anthony Taylor not having specified) by Dembélé (42nd, 57th).
Extinguished by the Parisian domination, Sporting nevertheless knew how to keep its back and created several interesting situations, the biggest being a miss from Suarez, unable to take back a tense cross from Trincao (51st) just in front of the goal. But the striker recovered in a resounding manner at the end of the match, to the great delight of the green and white supporters.
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