Pep Guardiola speaks!
Barney Ronay on Pep Guardiola
Jamie Jackson's player ratings
David Hytner’s match report is in. One click and you’re there. Thanks for reading this MBM. Sleep tight!
Pep Guardiola speaks. “We started well ... for a lot of our people it was the first time in the semi-finals so they wanted to do it well ... the last ten minutes of the first half was good, and the second half was excellent ... we scored two goals away and that is so important ... but we have a hard job to do in six days ... sometimes you need to be more relaxed, to be more ourselves ... sometimes you do not play free ... we changed the way we pressed, we were more aggressive ... we found the goals and could have scored another one, but I am satisfied with the performance ... we still have 90 minutes to beat them and against a team like PSG anything can happen ... I want us to be ourselves in the second leg.”
Photograph: Alexander Scheuber/UEFA/Getty Images
Updated
Kevin De Bruyne talks to BT Sport. “It was a game of two halves. We started well in the first ten minutes and had some control but they are an unbelievable team with great quality up front. it was a shame the way we conceded. After 25 minutes we changed our press and it became better, and the second half was much, much better. The way the first goal goes in was a bit lucky but we played football and yeah, we did well there. The first half we were too rushed, and that’s not the way we are set up as a team. In the second half we tried to find the spaces more patiently. The progression we made as a team was good. There is still a game to go, and we have to concentrate on that. We know there are moments when we will suffer, we know how good they are, but we know we have quality to play good in the second game.”
The weird thing was, both of City’s goals had an element of farce about them, PSG’s defence offering up huge gifts tied with pretty bows. Yet they were no more than City deserved for a sensational second-half performance; they turned their press up to 11, and barely allowed PSG’s midfield, never mind their dangerous front three, a kick. What threatened to become an evening to forget was transformed into one of the great European performances in City’s history. The same can be said for PSG, albeit in reverse. They’ll be happy to have limited the damage to 1-2, and will hope their superstars will do a number on City at the Etihad ... where they’ll need to score at least twice. A reminder: City have only conceded four goals in their entire run so far. It promises to be one hell of a second leg, with City so close to their first-ever European Cup / Champions League final!
Updated
FULL TIME: PSG 1-2 Manchester City
What a second-half display by City, who have one foot in the Istanbul final!
90 min +4: De Bruyne has a chance to seriously riff on PSG’s pain, rasping a rising shot just over the bar from distance.
90 min +3: Mbappe chases after a long punt down the middle. Dias eases him off the ball, much to the PSG striker’s irritation. He’s not getting the free kick he wants.
90 min +2: City sit back and soak up what little PSG throw at them. They’re looking extremely comfortable as they run the clock down.
90 min: There will be four added minutes.
88 min: A spot of head tennis in the City box comes to nothing. One run from Mbappe apart, the hosts have offered nothing in attack since the break. City have pressed them into irrelevance.
86 min: De Bruyne stands on Danilo’s ankle, which turns a little. It’s only a yellow, though PSG want a red. Neymar and Mbappe are especially incensed, and though it’s probably the right decision - it’s not in the same ballpark as the Gueye challenge, as PSG are claiming - you’ve seen red cards shown for less. De Bruyne wisely keeps his counsel.
85 min: De Bruyne swings one in from the left. Bakker and Navas confuse each other, the ball sailing just wide right of an unguarded goal. So nearly a more farcical repeat of the equaliser.
84 min: Mahrez, out on the right, ripples the side netting. PSG are hanging on by their fingernails.
83 min: PSG up their efforts to stem the bleeding by replacing Paredes with Herrera. “Cracking game this! Wish we could have them every week,” writes Thomas Krantz. “Too soon?”
82 min: Rodri works his way down the right and stands one up in the middle for ... nobody. A quizzical look as he wonders where his team-mates were there.
81 min: This is all City. They could kill this tie tonight if they’re about their business.
79 min: Danilo comes on for Di Maria, as PSG try to shore things up and limit the damage tonight.
78 min: That was a proper potential leg-breaker of a challenge, though thankfully Gundogan, while in a lot of genuine pain, hasn’t suffered anything too serious and looks able to continue. PSG had lost the collective head, making quite a few petulant challenges, and that was the inevitable outcome.
RED CARD: Gueye (PSG)
76 min: Gueye slides in recklessly on Gundogan. Studs halfway up the leg. That’s a disgraceful challenge, and the referee doesn’t even wait for VAR. Out comes the red card, and the PSG midfielder can have no complaints whatsoever.
75 min: Mahrez crosses from the right. Foden eyebrows goalwards, his flashing header straight at Navas. City are scenting blood here. Another goal is far from a pipe dream, and if they get it, Istanbul will suddenly feel very close indeed.
74 min: By way of further illustration at PSG’s sudden disintegration, Neymar is booked for a sly nibble at Dias.
73 min: What a turnaround by City. PSG look ragged, and their heads must be addled. From being in control at the break, they’re all over the shop right now.
GOAL! PSG 1-2 Manchester City (Mahrez 71)
A long debate between De Bruyne and Mahrez. Who will take? De Bruyne, surely. Well, that’s PSG proved wrong, because Mahrez takes a surprise snap shot. His effort flies straight at the wall ... then straight through it! The wall opens up, Paredes and Kimpembe allowing the ball to whistle between them and into the bottom left! Navas is beyond livid with his defenders, and no wonder ... not that City care a jot!
Updated
70 min: Foden is bundled over by Paredes, and booked for his trouble. This is a free kick in a dangerous, central position, 25 yards out. “PSG are playing like Burnley, albeit with Kylian Mbappe instead of Jay Rodriguez,” argues Gary Naylor.
68 min: Neymar and Mbappe have done very little in the second half, and now it’s their turn to cut frustrated figures. Ah the twists and turns of top-class sport!
66 min: That’s no more than City deserve for their second-half performance ... and they’d been coming on strong during the final knockings of the first half, too. Credit to Walker, as well, who made that lung-bursting run to earn the corner that led to the equaliser. He won’t get an assist; will a moral one do?
GOAL! PSG 1-1 Manchester City (De Bruyne 64)
The corner on the right is worked out to De Bruyne, deep on the left. He curls deep towards the far post. Nobody gets anything on it ... and the ball flies into the top right, Navas misjudging the situation and reacting far too late. City have their precious away goal!
Updated
63 min: De Bruyne wins the ball in the middle of the park and drives forward. Walker joins the attack from deep, pelting down the right at warp speed. He’s sent clear into the box, and pulls into the centre. There’s nobody to tap home, and PSG bundle out for a corner. From which ...
62 min: Zinchenko replaces Cancelo, who had looked lively since the restart but was on a booking.
61 min: A right-wing cross is headed half clear by Kimpembe. The ball drops to De Bruyne, who attempts a spectacular bicycle kick. De Bruyne catches it well, but the ball flies over the bar. So close to a goal for the ages.
Updated
59 min: ... and here they are, at it again, as Di Maria sashays away from his right-hand corner flag and pearls a pass down the wing for Mbappe. Once again, Ederson saves the day as a no-nonsense sweeper keeper.
57 min: That’ll have reminded City of how quickly PSG can hurt them, despite all their territory and possession. It was a rapier-thrust of an attack.
56 min: Neymar’s cute flick down the right takes three City men out of the game and sends Mbappe tearing down the right. Mbappe enters the box, drops a shoulder, and fires low across the face of goal. Verratti is inches away from doubling the lead with the tip of his toe, but the ball evades him. Nothing happens at the resulting corner.
Updated
54 min: Cancelo twists and turns his way down the left. He reaches the byline and dinks infield. An easy claim for Navas, but City continue to impress since the restart.
52 min: City have turned their press up to 11 since the restart, and PSG are struggling to get out of their final third. Promising signs for England’s champions-in-waiting, though City started the first half well too, and look how that panned out.
50 min: Cancelo is down and rolling around in some pain. Di Maria had a little nibble at him, but there didn’t seem too much in it. As Cancelo screams, referee Felix Brych strolls over and tells him to get up. He gets up.
48 min: De Bruyne grooves down the right and attempts a cross, only for the ball to hit Kimpembe and ricochet back off him and out for a corner. But this is a strong start to the second half by City, who will be very much desirous of a precious away goal.
47 min: Mahrez wins a free kick out on the right. De Bruyne takes it. Bakker, who had given it away, heads it clear.
46 min: Neymar has a bandage on his left elbow, a result of the set-to with Cancelo.
City get the second 45 underway. No changes.
Half-time postbag. “Guardiola’s going to have to say something pretty special to wake City from their slumber,” argues Colum Fordham. “Neymar and Co are bossing the match and will score more unless City pull their socks up. Foden showed his nerves when he could have scored with a more composed finish. I think City could use some of Aguero’s big match experience. Bring on the Trafford!”
On the subject of young goalkeeper James, here’s Matt Dony: “I hope Trafford’s nickname in the dressing room is Trad Brick. Niche reference!“ Ah, I remember the night Ronarid scored a hat-trick at Trad Brick. Salad days.
Half-time entertainment. Chelsea have one foot in the final after last night’s 1-1 draw in Spain, but ... well ... Real Madrid are Real Madrid. Jacob Steinberg reports.
HALF TIME: PSG 1-0 Manchester City
Well that flew by ... and the whistle went as City were beginning to impose themselves on the match, finally. That’ll give Guardiola something to riff on during his half-time team-talk. Huge second half coming up. Don’t go anywhere ... like we need to tell you not to go anywhere.
45 min: There will be one added minute. Can we have one added hour?
44min: On the touchline, Pep throws his hands into the air in frustration. He’ll know his side have been second best so far; he’ll also know that, despite it all, they could easily had scored a couple of precious away goals. This tie is tantalisingly balanced.
42 min: Some space for Silva, out on the right. He rolls infield for Foden, who is free on the edge of the PSG box! He should really score, but shoots too close to Navas, who is able to parry the rising shot into the air, then claim.
Updated
41 min: Florenzi drops a shoulder to make some space in the City box on the right. He can’t quite get a shot away. Neymar comes racing in, hoping to slam home from six yards. He goes over, and wants a penalty, but neither ref nor VAR shows interest in giving it. If anything, his legs got tangled up with his team-mates, though City hearts were in mouths for a couple of seconds there.
40 min: Neymar is down again, having been tugged back by Foden then bodychecked by Cancelo. All hard but fair, though it looks as though Neymar hurt his elbow upon landing. Foden comes across to sportingly haul him back up. No hard feelings.
Updated
38 min: City slow things down with some sterile possession in the midfield. Then suddenly De Bruyne springs, driving down the left and crossing low. Bakker hacks out for a corner that’s punched clear with ease by Navas.
36 min: Neymar is absurdly good when he’s on song. Down near his own corner flag on the left, he hoicks a crossfield pass over his shoulder to release Florenzi into space on the right. Florenzi passes long in the hope of releasing Mbappe; City are glad to see Ederson race from his box and slice into the stand. There is surely no way that this game will end 1-0.
34 min: Verratti crosses from the right. Mbappe fails to trap the dropping ball; he’d otherwise be clear, 12 yards out. Instead he pulls back for Bekker, whose low drive is blocked. PSG come again, and now it’s Neymar’s turn to fail to control when in space in the City box. This is breathless stuff.
32 min: Navas plays a dreadful pass out from the back, allowing Foden to snaffle and make good down the left. He shovels a cross towards Mahrez, who, coming in from the other flank, tries to guide a header back into the top left. Marquinhos heads clear and Navas claims. That’ll give City some succour.
31 min: Cancelo earns the first yellow card of this semi-final with an agricultural lunge across Mbappe, who was planning to hare off down the right. City aren’t exactly flapping, but they’ve lost a little of their usual super-cool.
30 min: A free kick for City out on the right, and a chance to put some rare pressure on the Parisian defence. De Bruyne swings it in. It’s an easy punch clear for Navas.
28 min: Neymar whips this one in from the left. Paredes steers a fine header inches wide of the top-left corner. Had it been on target, Ederson wasn’t getting to that. City are all over the shop at the set pieces.
27 min: City aren’t dealing with these corners at all. Di Maria whips it in, perhaps looking to score directly. Ederson is forced to punch out for another corner ... though before it can be taken, VAR looks for something or other, only to find there’s nothing.
26 min: PSG stroke it around nicely again, Neymar and Di Maria at the heart of some very pretty patterns. Eventually the pressure earns another corner, out on the right.
24 min: A clearing header by Stones drops to Verratti, who should take a speculative first-time whack but doesn’t.
23 min: Neymar is down and unhappy, having been clipped by De Bruyne. Just a free kick, which seems about right.
21 min: ... and this is much better, as Cancelo, quarterbacking from a deep position on the left, rakes a glorious diagonal towards Silva, who meets the dropping ball on the right-hand corner of the six-yard box. He nearly steers an improvised volley home from a tight angle, but Navas is positioned well to turn the ball out for a corner, from which nothing comes. This is a great match.
Updated
20 min: Mahrez has looked lively, though, and runs again down the right before cutting back for De Bruyne, whose wedge into the box is uncharacteristically aimless. Better from City, though.
19 min: Neymar strips Mahrez, who is happy to hear the whistle for a soft foul as the PSG striker makes off towards the goal with Mbappe by his side. The home team are playing with a swagger at the moment. Can City knock them off their stride?
17 min: That’s just the fourth goal City have conceded in this competition so far. What an expression of PSG’s potency: it took them just a quarter of an hour.
GOAL! PSG 1-0 Manchester City (Marquinhos 15)
Di Maria whips a flat, vicious corner towards the near post. Marquinhos rises high and flicks a header into the top left. Ederson had absolutely no chance whatsoever. That had been coming.
Updated
14 min: PSG continue to push City back. Now it’s Di Maria’s turn to have a whack for distance. His shot is deflected out for a corner on the right.
13 min: Neymar hits the corner long, finding Mbappe at the far post. Mbappe can’t get a shot away, so pulls back for Florenzi, who shoots low and instigates a game of pinball. The ball breaks to Neymar, whose rising shot is tipped over by Ederson. City deal with the second corner easily enough.
12 min: A huge sigh of relief for City. Walker is good to continue, and he’s soon pressed into action again, Di Maria pressing down the left and winning the first corner of the match off the City right-back.
11 min: Paredes makes a couple of strong block tackles, first on Walker, then on Gundogan. He wins both, then is fouled by Walker, snapping back from behind. Just a free kick - though had we been an hour in, you wouldn’t be surprised to see a yellow. Walker perhaps gets away with it because he’s hurt himself while making the challenge.
Updated
9 min: An early pattern seems to be setting, City passing it around a lot, PSG happy to sit back and wait for the opportunity to ping a counter, something they’ve nearly done a couple of times now. Much as we expected, then.
7 min: Rodri is nearly caught snoozing in the centre circle again, as Neymar and Mbappe swarm. He clips the ball away to a team-mate just in time, but he could do with waking up.
5 min: Di Maria crosses from the PSG right, albeit to nobody. Silva sashays in from the City right, but can’t quite release De Bruyne into the box. This already has the whiff of freewheeling end-to-end entertainment.
4 min: Mahrez glides in from the right before slipping a ball down the channel for De Bruyne. For a second, it looks as though the City captain will get a shot away, but Marquinhos is over quickly to intercept. And so both teams have already bared their teeth. More of this, please!
2 min: An early warning sign for City, as Rodri loses possession cheaply in the centre circle, allowing Mbappe to step forward and feed Neymar down the inside-left. Neymar enters the box but his shot is half-blocked by Walker and fielded by Ederson.
Updated
1 min: A very early sortie for Mbappe down the left. He goes nowhere. “I see City have Trafford on the bench,” notes Robert Hanley. “What age is he?” I won’t insult anyone’s intelligence by needlessly finishing that off.
Updated
PSG kick off ... but only after the players take a knee of respect. There’s no room for racism. Kick it out.
The waiting is nearly over ... and the teams are out! Such a shame that the Parc des Princes isn’t packed to the rafters, fans making so much noise you’d swear Serge Blanco was once again romping around with a rooster on his chest, but it is what it is, we’re kind of used to it now, and in any case there’s still a little je ne sais quoi in the air. It’s the last four of the Champions League! The hosts in their traditional colours of dark blue, red and white, City in their famous sky blue. Not long now!
Updated
Pep Guardiola, relaxed and cheerful, talks to BT Sport. “I over-exaggerated, obviously this is not a friendly game! But the great, great players play with a responsibility, with pressure, like it’s a normal situation. Now we have a plan, like we do for every game, and we will try to be ourselves. If we win, we will have done well, if we don’t, it will be why did we not play with strikers?! We need a type of game with a lot of passes, with the quality to keep it in the right moment, and to defend and attack all together. We don’t want many transitions, because if we don’t finish ours, they can use theirs and they are so, so, so, so dangerous. PSG have to impose the game, especially in the French league; most are so deep they have to find a way to attack them. So they know how to do it. But at the same time, with the pace they have up front, they can punish you.”
Pre-match reading. Allow Jonathan Liew to whet the appetite.
The meeting of European football’s two great petrocarbon empires feels ostensibly like a moment for savage lament: to mourn football’s slow capitulation to capital and disdain for human rights, to curse the subversion of the game we all love to forces well beyond our control. Even so, this is a course of action that only really makes sense until about 7.59pm on Wednesday night, at which point all moral resistance feels queerly obsolescent. This fixture is an utter disgrace and I object to it in the strongest possible terms. Peep! Right: come on Neymar, get stuck in, son.
Manchester City make four changes from the XI sent out at Wembley to complete the League Cup quadruple on Sunday. Ederson, John Stones, Rodri and Bernardo Silva take the places of Zack Steffen, Aymeric Laporte, Fernandinho and Raheem Sterling, who all drop to the bench. Look at this another way, though, and City make just one change to the team that saw off Borussia Dortmund earlier this month. The only swap: Joao Cancelo for Oleksandr Zinchenko.
The big news for PSG: Kylian Mbappe is fit, having gone off injured in the final minutes of the 3-1 win at Metz last Saturday. Marquinhos also passed a late fitness test.
The teams
Paris Saint-Germain: Navas, Florenzi, Marquinhos, Kimpembe, Bakker, Paredes, Gueye, Di Maria, Verratti, Neymar, Mbappe.
Subs: Kehrer, Icardi, Rafinha, Danilo Pereira, Sergio Rico, Kean, Sarabia, Kurzawa, Ander Herrera, Diallo, Draxler, Dagba.
Manchester City: Ederson, Walker, Stones, Dias, Joao Cancelo, Gundogan, Rodri, De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva, Mahrez, Foden.
Subs: Ake, Sterling, Gabriel Jesus, Aguero, Zinchenko, Steffen, Laporte, Torres, Mendy, Fernandinho, Garcia, Trafford.
Referee: Felix Brych (Germany).
Updated
Preamble
Paris Saint Germain and Manchester City are two of the biggest clubs in the world right now, and the two best teams in this year’s Champions League. This would have made one hell of a final; well, it might just make a semi-final for the ages too.
Both clubs are desperate to finally parlay their 21st-century domestic dominance into Champions League glory. PSG came up short last season, going down in the final to Bayern Munich, and would fancy a crack this year as big-game favourites, which they surely would be against either Chelsea or Real Madrid. City meanwhile need to get over that last-four hurdle for the first time; unlike, say, Reims, Partizan, Panathinaikos, Brugge and Malmo, they’ve yet to contest a European Cup final. That’s a state of affairs they’ll want to address sooner rather than later - and everyone’s said sorry, so let’s not belabour the point - before taking things from there.
So with the stakes high, and the desire even higher, this could be a tumultuous tie. If it’s anything like PSG’s quarter-final rumble with Bayern, we’re in for a classic. It could also be a stultifying goalless bore, but where’s the benefit in negativity? Goalfest, please! It’s on!
Kick off: 8pm BST, 9pm at the Parc des Princes, Paris.
Updated
