One of the giants of the game returns to the Champions League stage tonight. Despite dominating their domestic league, the hierarchy is reportedly losing faith in the manager. Meanwhile, their expensively-assembled cabal of superstar names have not quite gelled into the sum of their gilded parts. And this footballing ode to largesse will be playing against Real Madrid.
The team in question is Paris Saint-Germain, but you would have been forgiven for thinking the opening paragraph referred to Real Madrid themselves. The pieces fit. The team assembled more for headlines than holistic cohesion. The coach, former Madrid target Mauricio Pochettino no less, is under-fire despite his side sitting 13 points clear at the top of the table. It is the sort of high-society drama we have become used to at the Bernabeu. These two sides could yet collaborate on a few chapters in this particular soap opera.
For two clubs that pride themselves on their attempts to transcend sport, their immediate concern will be facing each other on the pitch. Real Madrid are a team defined by the Champions League, having won Europe’s top honour a record 13 times. PSG are a team who have made it their mission to win their first. This is why the Parc des Princes has become a sort of premature football hall of fame. The Parisian’s can name Lionel Messi, Neymar, Sergio Ramos, Angel di Maria and Mauro Icardi in their line-up. It makes for quite the Panini sticker collection, though it’s not quite as visually appealing on the pitch.
While PSG are reading from the galactico hymn sheet that Madrid popularised two decades ago, Los Blancos themselves have taken a different tack. The eye-catching names in the La Liga leaders’ squad these days tend to sit on the fringes. Gareth Bale, Eden Hazard and Isco are not the soccer superpowers they once were. Manager Carlo Ancelotti, a former PSG coach himself, is looking elsewhere for inspiration. The presence of the Italian in the dugout is just another piece of Paris-Madrid cross-pollination that makes this round-of-16 tie so compelling.
Away from the field, there is likely to be further jousting between these two giants in the summer. Kylian Mbappe, PSG’s goalscoring prodigy who is somehow still only 23, will see his contract expire at the end of the season. The Ligue 1 club are reportedly preparing a deal that would see the France international become the highest-paid player at the club, eclipsing Messi’s reported weekly salary of over £700,000.
Madrid have openly courted the player for years, and a deal was reported to be close last summer. The La Liga side surprised everyone, including PSG officials, by tabling a deal worth over £180 million. Such a sum for a player approaching free agency is unheard of, and it was hard to know which team’s conduct was more mystifying. Madrid for offering such a sum or PSG for rejecting it.
There will be no such inter-club posturing this summer. Instead, both clubs will put their proposals to Mbappe himself. PSG have taken the baton from Real Madrid’s diamond-encrusted galactico peak, but losing the World Cup winner to their role models could cause a paradigm shift. PSG would see their team significantly weakened, while Los Blancos would re-announce themselves as major players after a quiet period. The outcome of the Mbappe saga could end up having longer-lasting ramifications than tonight’s game.
But for now the focus is purely on progress to the quarter-final of the Champions League. Madrid have the historic pedigree, but have only gone further than the round-of-16 once in the last three seasons. PSG have got so close to the trophy they could almost taste it, reaching the final in 2020. Whoever goes through, this is just one battle in an ongoing war between two sides who walk very similar paths.
