danyjr wrote:Very un-Pochettino-like to play like this. I've lost hope in PSG.

This season's CL is between the defending champions Bayern and City. Nobody comes close.

He doesnt have Kean like last time, and I guess Di Maria isnt 100%, and no Neymar, and Draxler whos been pretty poor for ages now, so wouldnt be too harsh on Poch. But yea, definitely Bayern or Man C.

CBarca wrote:

Casciavit wrote:Amazing half by Navas

History will look on Navas kindly. One of the great keepers in the 21st century. If he can continue his high level for another 5 years or so, which is when you'd expect him to really start declining if he hasn't done so by then, I think he ends up top 5.

The only thing he hasn't got for him right now is longevity at a top club, but he's been performing at a high level since 2014 and few have had the success he's had since then.

I feel like he's been underrated throughout his entire career. I think he was the best goalkeeper in the world for at least one season, following his failed transfer swap with De Gea. He hasn't been able to replicate that form since, but he's still continued to perform at a high level.

Thimmy wrote:

CBarca wrote:

Casciavit wrote:Amazing half by Navas

History will look on Navas kindly. One of the great keepers in the 21st century. If he can continue his high level for another 5 years or so, which is when you'd expect him to really start declining if he hasn't done so by then, I think he ends up top 5.

The only thing he hasn't got for him right now is longevity at a top club, but he's been performing at a high level since 2014 and few have had the success he's had since then.

I feel like he's been underrated throughout his entire career. I think he was the best goalkeeper in the world for at least one season, following his failed transfer swap with De Gea. He hasn't been able to replicate that form since, but he's still continued to perform at a high level.

Definitely was/is better than Courtois. That transfer did not make any sense.

He's remembered fondly and loved dearly by most Madrid fans. Even on GL, most of us were against selling him.

Well the rest of this second definitely shows our limitations. This is the best we can manage - not much

Anyway, overall am happy with the performance still, at least we didnt get raped, although PSG did go a bit easy on us this game.

The way Mbappe just walked through Lenglet there, gee...

I like Mbappe just as much as anyone else. Speed, fancy dribbling, good finishing, he's an entertaining player to watch. And this is probably a controversial opinion on here, but I can't think of a single match where he broke a firm deadlock, or helped his team win against the odds. The first leg against Barcelona was no exception.

Whenever I see him excel, PSG are already quite comfortably out-playing their opponents. I may be wrong, I don't watch him week in, week out, and I'm sure this is an unpopular impression on here, but I'd like to see him be more of a difference maker when the rest of the team can't seem to find a way to win. The hype was real when he scored his hattrick in the last leg, but that match aside, I relatively often find myself expecting more from him. If I'm not mistaken, he'd gone 5+ matches without scoring in the CL before that hattrick. And like Pogba, he did absolutely nothing against Real Madrid, when they were still a team worth mentioning.

Hard to agree on that. I wouldnt judge him or PSG by tonight.

They were in a difficult situation which many teams face.

They are used to be offensive and trying to score goals. They didnt need any goals tonight so they struggled to balance going forward and leaving spaces behind, or being passive and defensive which isnt something they usually do.

Mbappe is the real deal, if you give him spaces he is impossible to control. Not just with the ball, but look at that moment for that shot vs De Jong. Very smart movement.

CBarca wrote:

Casciavit wrote:The more I watch the CL the more I'm convinced that the way to do well is to avoid stupid individual mistakes and finish off your chances. You just can't be missing sitters and penalties at this stage when the margins are so small. Dembele's finishing disaster lass, Messi's missed penalty, and Lenglet's brainfart is going to cost them.

Mou is a dinosaur and mostly a shit coach these days by anyone's measure, Moyes is outperforming him right now for example, but he's had CL success by understanding this, buying players and getting his teams to minimize mistakes and finish clinically.

That Inter 2010 team was an absolute masterclass and Mou's best achievement, easily.

Yup I've talked about it at length, but killers up front are so important. If Bayern had your chances the match would've at least went to extra time.

Some good subs and adjustments by Poch in the second half but most of it was Barca running out of steam. Would have liked to see what happens if Messi scores that penalty though.

Kurzawa is awful

Yep, if that goes in just before half time and then things get rough for PSG. But once that didnt go in, the remaining life was sucked out of the team.

But at least Koeman has stumbled on a good shape finally. I think he can go a step further with some further changes but im perhaps asking for alot. Regardless, this has some similarities to the season before Rijkaard where we stumbled on a good line up near the end which lead into the next season.

We really need someone who isnt Griezmann and a left footed defender though.

The Franchise wrote:Hard to agree on that. I wouldnt judge him or PSG by tonight.

They were in a difficult situation which many teams face.

They are used to be offensive and trying to score goals. They didnt need any goals tonight so they struggled to balance going forward and leaving spaces behind, or being passive and defensive which isnt something they usually do.

Mbappe is the real deal, if you give him spaces he is impossible to control. Not just with the ball, but look at that moment for that shot vs De Jong. Very smart movement.

I'm not judging him based on tonight, at all. Based on all of the CL matches I've seen him in, I think he comes up short relatively often. This has been a topic for discussion on here more than once in the past, but seems to be easily forgotten. He's great when PSG are great. As for him being impossible to control, that's definitely up for debate, otherwise I wouldn't even have made that post. Obviously a talented player, but I can't just ignore his relatively consistent lack of impact when PSG aren't comfortable.

I just checked the stats. Mbappe had scored 2 goals in the 13 Champions League matches, prior to his hattrick against Barcelona.

Thimmy wrote:

The Franchise wrote:Hard to agree on that. I wouldnt judge him or PSG by tonight.

They were in a difficult situation which many teams face.

They are used to be offensive and trying to score goals. They didnt need any goals tonight so they struggled to balance going forward and leaving spaces behind, or being passive and defensive which isnt something they usually do.

Mbappe is the real deal, if you give him spaces he is impossible to control. Not just with the ball, but look at that moment for that shot vs De Jong. Very smart movement.

I'm not judging him based on tonight, at all. Based on all of the CL matches I've seen him in, I think he comes up short relatively often. This has been a topic for discussion on here more than once in the past, but seems to be easily forgotten. He's great when PSG are great. As for him being impossible to control, that's definitely up for debate, otherwise I wouldn't even have made that post. Obviously a talented player, but I can't just ignore his relatively consistent lack of impact when PSG aren't comfortable.

I just checked the stats. Mbappe had scored 2 goals in the 13 Champions League matches, prior to his hattrick against Barcelona.

This is completely false:

-  First off, Mbappe has only played CL since his Monaco days.  In 42 CL games, he has 25 goals and 17 assists.  He actually beat Messi's record for fastest to reach 25 goals after this game (https://www.beinsports.com/us/uefa-champions-league/video/kylian-mbappe-breaks-lionel-messis-record-to-/1650981).  This CL season alone, he has 6 goals and 3 assists in 7 games.

-  Forget that he carried the entire France NT attack in the world cup....  but let's focus on CL.  For Monaco, he carried them past City and past Dortmund (scored a brace at Dortmund and at City if I recall).  For PSG, other than this last summer where he played with a destroyed ankle (crazy tackle by Perrin a week before the playoffs https://youtu.be/hbWh7ij_ZDk) he has been great in almost all the big games, especially when you consider that Neymar and Verratti are always injured when the big games roll around.  Di Maria misses a lot of them too.  Cavani, when he was at PSG, would never make it back from vacation after he went home in December and Icardi is not a big game player.  It's not just his goals...  he assists an enormous amount of goals.  He also causes something like 2/3 of PSG's penalties.  He's shown that he can shoulder the attack no question.  PSG loses big games on defense mostly and sometimes due to lack of midfield creativity (without Verratti), not because Mbappe hasn't performed in almost all the cases.

Is he perfect?  No.  He started this past season less dynamically than usual.  But so has everyone else.  Weird start to the season for everyone.  He has 1 flaw (his air game) and 2 areas that can be better (doesn't play simple enough at times and his finishing could be more clinical).

Such a ridiculous and factually false statement.

Hah. I did expect you to be the one to reply. Fair enough, Sports. I think you're arguing beyond my initial statement, but it's fair. I'm off to bed.

And just to be clear...  Haaland is an absolute stud as well.  He's going to break a lot of these records again because he's a pure goalscorer.

 These two are the superstars of football for this coming 10 years (if they stay healthy).  So although I'd love Mbappe at Madrid for obvious reasons, I really don't care which one comes as long as it's at least one of them.  Preferably both... but we have no money.  Although Bale may play himself into the Spurs keeping him so there is some hope.  That's a big wage bill.

Thoughts on the game:  PSG played not to lose.  Barca, in their current state, was never going to come back unless they played a perfect game. Too many players on Barca would need to be great when they are mostly very inconsistent. It wasn't a disappointing game in the sense that I expected a weird game.  PSG isn't equipped at fullback to park the bus.  Kurzawa and Florenzi are absolute shit defenders.

Mbappe carried France attack in World Cup

Umm what? He had two good games the whole tournament (Argentina and final). Griezmann overall was their best attacking player and he got the Bronze Ball for it.

Why does sports casually drop statements thinking we don't watch football or have Alzheimers lol

The entire France strategy (unfortunately because we could have been far more offensive) was to sit back, recover the ball, get it to Pogba if you can and have Mbappe fire over the top.  That created panic and destabilized the defense even if the ball didn’t make it to him...  created all the space.  We literally won every elimination round game like this.

Farfan already mentioned this too.  Giroud didn’t score and Griezmann had 1 goal I think. Almost all the danger was a result of Mbappe’s movements off the ball. Teams had to counter that.

So yes, he absolutely carried the attack and it was by design.

I agree that France strategy in the World Cup revolves around the speed of Mbappe outside but to go as far as saying that he carries the team is a bit much. He did not in fact carry the team, but he was by far the most dangerous player, and had the best performance vs Argentina and in the finals, two massive games

U get the feeling Mbappe can be a bit of a mood player. If he really wants he can really turn it on, but hes still relatively young, and he tends to play around a bit in certain games at times, so a bit like Neymar actually lol. Not sure about his work ethics and mentailty, which Haaland looks totally focused on. But Mbappe definitely will rule football if he wants to and if he moves to Real.

Also very true PSG was a bit uncertain in this game since they didnt have to attack, but they arent great at just sitting back as well, so it was a bit weird and messy at times. Dont forget PSG only had Mbappe and Icardi, Draxler came in and just basically defended and passed ball. I shit my pants at the thought of what would have happened if PSG had Neymar as well full strength in both legs, really would have been 8-x again

sportsczy wrote:And just to be clear...  Haaland is an absolute stud as well.

I really didn’t want or intend to start a Haaland vs Mbappe debate or comparison. I don’t care for it. I’ve just observed that Mbappe has a mildly frustrating tendency to be quite ineffective when the rest of the team don’t have an upper hand on the opponent team. Moreso than a criticism, that just means I expect more from him in those matches, and I hope he can improve in that regard.

Thimmy wrote:

The Franchise wrote:Hard to agree on that. I wouldnt judge him or PSG by tonight.

They were in a difficult situation which many teams face.

They are used to be offensive and trying to score goals. They didnt need any goals tonight so they struggled to balance going forward and leaving spaces behind, or being passive and defensive which isnt something they usually do.

Mbappe is the real deal, if you give him spaces he is impossible to control. Not just with the ball, but look at that moment for that shot vs De Jong. Very smart movement.

I'm not judging him based on tonight, at all. Based on all of the CL matches I've seen him in, I think he comes up short relatively often. This has been a topic for discussion on here more than once in the past, but seems to be easily forgotten. He's great when PSG are great. As for him being impossible to control, that's definitely up for debate, otherwise I wouldn't even have made that post. Obviously a talented player, but I can't just ignore his relatively consistent lack of impact when PSG aren't comfortable.

I just checked the stats. Mbappe had scored 2 goals in the 13 Champions League matches, prior to his hattrick against Barcelona.

I think I was saying impossible to control when given spaces. If you close the space behind, of course he is less effective. But that goes for many many players. But if the opponent gives spaces, you absolutely cant do anything about it. The ease he goes past players in the 1v1 and his usually refined finishing makes him a terrible match up for most.

But anyway I cant agree with this notion because what it seems like your saying is that he wont do much unless the team in essence makes it happen and then he can be a front runner subsequently.

I dont see that at all. He seems to me to often be the catalyst to the performance, outside Ney who obviously is the more well rounded player.

Can you point to one performance where PSG seemed to be going nowhere, and Mbappe was the difference-maker?

Seems like an unfair comment. No one here watches psg outside of the CL.

BarrileteCosmico wrote:Seems like an unfair comment. No one here watches psg outside of the CL.

But this is GL. Everyone has strong opinions, nonetheless. Fair comment.

I cannot. But trying to find games where that was even possible is very small.

What possible games could qualify? Bayern and Dortmund 1st leg (he missed the 2nd)?

Bayern. Nobody on either said had a tremendous offensive game. Lets not stick it only on Mbappe.

I guess you can say Dortmund though I dont think that proves much, it's a 2 legged tie he only played half of. He missed Atalanta game also as I recall.

Played in the Leipzig one but they won 3 nil, were up early in the game and never struggled so that doesnt count.

It's just very small sample size to make judgements off dont you think?

Had an absolute shitter of a match against RM a few years ago, as well. But I’ll stop mentioning him anymore before I give Sports a stroke. The whole world can disagree for all I care, ever since he burst onto the scene, I find myself wishing he had more impact in matches where you want players of his status to step up. That’s my impression based on actually watching his performances.

That’s not me saying that he’s bad or not great, I do think he is an exciting player, but I’m not entirely convinced as far as his quality of decisiveness is concerned - judging within the framework of his status as one of the best players in the world, of course.