Overthrown at the Parc des Princes this Wednesday evening by a PSG in their best clothes, the Manchester City players tried to justify their heavy defeat and argument number 1 was very simple: Paris was just better.
Last Sunday when leaving Portman Road after destroying Ipswich Town (6-0), the Citizens probably did not imagine relapsing in such a brutal way in Paris. Phil Foden, back in great form, had even seen “the best match of the season” of his team which then had four wins in five matches. Suffice to say that after leading 2-0 in the 53rd minute at the Parc des Princes, the Sky Blues did not really expect to be turned around like this.
Grealish highlights PSG
“It’s really a very good team, they deserved to win”
Asked by TNT Sports about this violent relapse, English winger Jack Grealish struggled to explain what had happened before putting forward a simple point: “Well done to Paris, they were so good, so energetic. They are much better than I thought. And I don’t mean it in a negative way, but they were on top tonight. It’s a really good team, they deserved to win. »
A speech that Bernardo Silva also gave after the match at the microphone of Canal+, the Portuguese who passed through L1 ten years ago explaining that, after the opening score, “Paris was much much better than us. They were more intense, more competitive, more aggressive… They deserved to win. » The merit of PSG is underlined by everyone on the English side, players and coaches alike, and Guardiola has repeated it several times: “PSG deserved to win, they were better than us. »
Guardiola admits defeat against a better team
The Catalan had warned before the match that PSG was a team that he really liked and he did not fail to point out after the game that he had “seen matches that PSG deserved to win but which they did not win. Today they succeeded. They were better and I congratulate them. You play a match and sometimes the opponents are better. We must accept it. »
-“They had one more man in the middle and we couldn’t deal with that.”
The Spanish coach, who appeared very marked by the defeat post-match, particularly insisted on the Parisian fury after his team’s two goals: “In the first half, we had some good moments, they had some. But they were better. At 0-2, it was very good, we scored twice in five minutes. But they also scored two goals in five minutes. We couldn’t control the first goal, it was a bit of a knockout. They took over at that point. They were better, faster, they won the duels, they had one more man in the middle and we couldn’t manage that. »
The new PSG seduces England
This extra man, this false 9 that Luis Enrique loves so much, caused a lot of torment to the Spanish coach who admitted that “The match was never the way we wanted it to be, but for that I give PSG a lot of credit. It’s a fantastic, extraordinary team and we have to understand. But at 2-0, if we could do it… but they scored straight after. Then if we could have kept the ball a little bit and stayed like that it would have been better but we couldn’t do it. »
“They were brilliant, at least as good as with their superstars Messi and Neymar”
While all of England is blaming City’s defeat, many voices among analysts also highlight a PSG team that was attractive, unlike those of the past. As soon as the referee blew the final whistle, the TNT Sports consultant who was broadcasting the game Darren Fletcher immediately wanted to talk about PSG: “What followed that second Manchester City goal was a top-level performance from PSG for 25-30 minutes. They were brilliant, at least as good as with their superstars Messi and Neymar. It was a top performance to go from 0-2 to 4-2. »
