Di María Double Helps PSG Ease To Win Against Real Madrid

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This was not a night for Galácticos, old or new. At a balmy, boisterous Parc Des Princes Paris Saint-Germain simply overran Real Madrid, pulling apart the hastily-stitched seams of Zinedine Zidane’s injury-depleted team and producing surely the most thrillingly assured performance under Thomas Tuchel.

Two first-half goals from Ángel Di María all but decided this Champions League opener. But it was the vigour and drive of the PSG midfield that left the 13-times champions looking ragged, with Marco Verratti a brilliantly spiky little playmaker, and Idrissa Gueye gleefully relentless in his pressing and covering. It will have escaped no one’s notice (least of all the man himself) that all this happened in the absence of Neymar, banned for two games and reduced to watching on from beneath his gilded baseball cap next to the injured Kylian Mbappé.

Le Match Des Etoiles! French television was pretty clear on how it wanted to pitch this Group A opener. Although in the event quite a few were missing from the sky.

PSG are a club geared for precisely these occasions, but here Neymar, Mbappé, Edinson Cavani and Julian Draxler were all either injured or suspended. Sport may be cruel but it also has an agreeably arch sense of humour. Instead football’s glitziest new-build attack would take on Real Madrid spearheaded by Mauro Icardi, on loan from Internazionale, with Erik Choupo-Moting providing back-up from the bench.

Madrid were also depleted, but still strong enough to line up with a sub-tier of the merely very expensive and celebrated. When your forward line is made up of Gareth Bale, Eden Hazard and Karim Benzema even the absence of the Ballon D’Or winner, Luka Modric, probably becomes easier to bear.

The Parc De Princes is a great crumbling concrete lump of a stadium, but it creates a wonderful sense of son et lumiere on these big midweek nights. Before kick-off an entire end was draped in Parisian colours as the stadium rocked out to the Village People, the words “PARIS EST MAGIQUE” draped behind the goal.

And it was PSG who took charge from the start. As Verratti and Gueye began to find their rhythms in midfield Juan Bernat produced one thrilling early surge inside Dani Carvajal, veering right to the edge of the penalty area with surprising ease.

It was a warning. With 14 minutes gone Bernat made the same run, this time feeding the ball into Icardi, then taking it back from a lovely little flick into his path. The pull-back found Di María. His finish was hard and low, beating Thibaut Courtois and billowing the net from a tight angle.

The Paris ultras erupted into a sea of flare-lighting, shirts-off delirium. Who needs £500m of attacking talent when you’ve got an overlapping full-back and a toe-poked near-post finish? *

PSG continued to press, Verratti finding neat little angles with his passes. The French champions had come to press and harry this stately Madrid midfield and at times Gueye and Marquinhos were a blur of malevolent white, sucking the air out of the game, making every moment in possession awkward and rushed. With half an hour gone Icardi crash-tackled his way through three Madrid players to force a goal-kick. On his touchline Tuchel applauded furiously. Tuchel may dress like a groovy sixth form drama teacher but he loves to see collisions, force and endless drilled running in his teams.

It was a high-energy surge down the right from Gueye that teed up the second goal, the ball fed into Di María, who fizzed a wonderful left-footed shot into the corner from the edge of the area.

Gareth Bale appeared to have pulled one back within half a minute, only for VAR to reveal his expertly juggled finish had involved use of the arm to cushion the ball.

And for a while as half-time approached PSG threatened to overwhelm Madrid, swarming forward in tight little units, passing the ball with speed and verve, dragging a groggy-looking blue-shirted midfield in their wake.

Zidane had to change something, to find a way of reversing the gravity of this game. Madrid did come out for the second half with a little more snap in their play. Hazard, who had been an interested observer in the first half, dropped deeper for the ball, then drove inside a couple of times from the left. But he looked what he is, a player still shaking off the fog of an injury absence.

And Paris were still hungry. Five minutes after the break Gueye robbed Casemiro in a perilous position. The ball was fed on to Di María, but his finish was horribly casual, scooped over the bar when he might have buried it, and buried Madrid. Tuchel raged and beat his chest in front of his bench. But Paris kept coming, Choupo-Moting, on for Icardi, tucking the ball just past the post after more swarming pressure.

Madrid did make some chances, the best pulled just wide by Karim Benzema, who worked hard without reward. But this was a night when that air of born-to-rule authority seemed to have passed, for now, to their white-shirted opponents.

At the death Thomas Meunier made it 3-0 as Madrid simply melted away, opened up by a simple break from halfway.

[Guardian UK]

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