At the Parc des Princes,<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Let us give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s. In 2022, at the time of the announcement of the arrival of Christophe Galtier as coach of Paris Saint-Germain, our colleague Eric Blanc, on the L’Equipe channel, released a tirade worthy of the best tribunes of our civilization: “PSG, we can compare it to Paramount, I am told Mission Impossible<\/span>the return with Daniel Craig, Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt and there, I arrive, it’s Dany Boon. \u00bb<\/p>\n So replace PSG with Arne Slot’s Liverpool and the diatribe would be just as effective four years later. Yes, because the match played by the Reds in the quarter-final first leg of the Champions League, Wednesday against PSG (2-0 defeat) had all the makings of a bad comedy. Even worse than Bad Buzz<\/span>the dung laid by Eric and Quentin in 2017, credited with the worst rating on Allo Cin\u00e9 (0.85\/5). This shows the cataclysmic match produced by Hugo Ekitike, yet sparkling in the selection, and his little friends.<\/p>\n On paper, the name of Liverpool, the third most successful club in the competition, would make the jaws of any player on the European scene tremble, remembering Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush, Graeme Souness, Steven Gerrard or Fernando Torres. Nope. To believe that, a year after their last title of champion of England, the Reds have become quite pale, playing expiatory victims against a team crowned with their first European title last year.<\/p>\n Losing to the Parisian machine is nothing infamous, especially when the pollen tickles your nostrils, but being spanked like this, playing like a relegated Ligue 1 player who puts the double-decker bus in his area while waiting for time to pass, is not worthy of the history of the Mersey club. Last year, Liverpool had already suffered martyrdom in the round of 16, before miraculously winning with a goal in the last minutes (0-1).<\/p>\n This time, there was no miracle. The fault in particular lies in an unusual system of five defenders with holes even before the quarter of an hour of play, in which no Reds player seemed comfortable. Arne Slot, the coach of the reigning English champions, tried to justify himself at a press conference:<\/p>\n \u00ab <\/span>Have you ever seen a team adopt a tactic here that didn’t allow PSG to constantly dominate and create opportunity after opportunity? If we had tried to play with real wingers, what would it have looked like against Hakimi and Nuno Mendes, who are incredible attacking threats? I watched many matches and the pattern was always the same. They have dominated almost every opponent they have faced here. \u00bb<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cAlmost\u201d, which implies that some people still managed to do it. But, to worry PSG, it would have been necessary to put other things in place than long throws a la Rory Delap from the Stoke City era or free kicks on the halfway line taken directly into the area to try to miraculously hit Virgil Van Dijk or Ibrahima Konat\u00e9… Apart from an off-target volley from Jeremie Frimpong, Paris never really held its back on the rare English “incursions”.<\/p>\n It’s not easy, at the same time, to pose a threat to the Park when two of your main offensive forces (Cody Gakpo and Mohamed Salah) are on the bench. If the Dutchman, with Alexander Isak, returned just a quarter of an hour from the end, the Egyptian did not play a single minute against PSG. And no injuries or behavioral issues to his credit. A simple technical decision from Arne Slot, who explained it after the match, without succeeding in convincing the audience:<\/p>\n \u00ab <\/span>I think at the end of the match, we were more in survival mode than having a chance to score. Mo has so many qualities and to have him defend in his own box for twenty or twenty-five minutes\u2026 I think it is better that he saves his energy for the many matches that await us in the weeks to come. \u00bb<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Struggling in the league, five points behind fourth place and closely followed by several teams, the Reds assume they already have the lead in the Premier League match this weekend, symbol of this total downgrading. \u201cWe have to get back in the saddle quickly, and Fulham is waiting for us too,\u201d underlined captain Virgil Van Dijk in the mixed zone.<\/p>\n Asked about the level of the Reds displayed during this quarter-final first leg, the Parisians were almost compassionate, like Warren Zaire-Emery, again author of a capital performance in the middle: \u201cYou know, it’s quite hard to come to the Park and play with our pressing. \u00bb Luis Enrique, himself, was even rave about his evening opponent: \u201cI think we had a very good match against a very high level opponent. It was very difficult against the best team in Europe. They showed that physically and technically they are a very strong team. \u00bb<\/p>\n All the news from the Champions League<\/p>\n We obviously couldn’t imagine the former Bar\u00e7a coach saying bad things about the Reds, but ensuring that this is the “best team in Europe” would not have pushed the envelope that far. Unless Luis Enrique lives in the past, like almost everyone when it comes to talking about Liverpool. Present at the Parc des Princes as a consultant for TNT Sports, the legend Steven Gerrard must have said to himself several times that \u201cyes, it was better before\u201d. It remains to be seen if, for once, it could also be a little later, in a week for example. Worse, it will be complicated<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the Parc des Princes, Let us give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s. In 2022, at the time of the announcement of the arrival of Christophe Galtier as coach of Paris Saint-Germain, our colleague Eric Blanc, on the L’Equipe channel, released a tirade worthy of the best tribunes of our civilization: “PSG, we can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/updatelive.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}No magic system<\/h2>\n
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Not a minute of play for Salah<\/h2>\n
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Blind Parisians?<\/h2>\n