StillBluessinceHydeRoad
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- 14 Aug 2020
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I went to have a look at the reports and comment on the match in the French newspapers today. It was not easy because nearly all of them hide reports on matches behind a pay wall but thankfully Le Parisien had a couple of articles about the match available to all. One was by Thierry Henry who covers the CL for a French broadcaster and the other was an article by someone who is presumably a French pundit. The two articles made largely the same points, which are not dissimilar to what we get over here.
For obvious reasons their focus was on PSG. Henry's piece was on the theme that their front three make no contribution at all when PSG don't have the ball, the Pochettino has not been able to do anything about this but daren't drop any of them. Its title was that you can't defend with 8 men and win the CL. He argued that you can get by in Ligue 1 but that if there's one team above all others that will take you apart for that kind of defence it is Manchester City. All night long City exposed PSG's full backs by attacking with 5, which gave the centre halves 2 or 3 to look after while our wide men and full backs overloaded out wide. N,M and M strolled about doing nothing.
The other article took up the same theme but started by saying that Pep showed ho much better he was than Poch in every department and tat PSG had no answer to City's high line and players who were always available. PSG were dragged across the pitch while Walker and Gundo created overloads. City's equalising goal came at the end of a long period of City possession and City had 9 men in the attack while PSG defended with 7! For the winner City had engineered 2 against 1 at the far post. All the way through City's players were technically better than their opponents.
Interesting stuff. As I say, not very different from what our own more objective pundits say.
For obvious reasons their focus was on PSG. Henry's piece was on the theme that their front three make no contribution at all when PSG don't have the ball, the Pochettino has not been able to do anything about this but daren't drop any of them. Its title was that you can't defend with 8 men and win the CL. He argued that you can get by in Ligue 1 but that if there's one team above all others that will take you apart for that kind of defence it is Manchester City. All night long City exposed PSG's full backs by attacking with 5, which gave the centre halves 2 or 3 to look after while our wide men and full backs overloaded out wide. N,M and M strolled about doing nothing.
The other article took up the same theme but started by saying that Pep showed ho much better he was than Poch in every department and tat PSG had no answer to City's high line and players who were always available. PSG were dragged across the pitch while Walker and Gundo created overloads. City's equalising goal came at the end of a long period of City possession and City had 9 men in the attack while PSG defended with 7! For the winner City had engineered 2 against 1 at the far post. All the way through City's players were technically better than their opponents.
Interesting stuff. As I say, not very different from what our own more objective pundits say.