Two domestic title races, featuring defending champions who normally win their leagues as a matter of routine, reached crossroads moments at the weekend.
In France, Lille went to Ligue 1 holders, Paris Saint-Germain, second against first, joined on points. In Germany, RB Leipzig played champions Bayern Munich, with a chance to narrow the gap between second and first to a single point.
Bayern had a major concern. Leading goalscorer, Robert Lewandowski, had picked up a knee injury on international duty with Poland grave enough to keep him out for, perhaps, all of April. PSG had good news for their summit meeting. Neymar was ready to make a first start, post-injury, for almost two months.
As it turned out, Bayern managed fine without their stellar centre-forward. Meanwhile, PSG would finish their high-pressure fixture with their star, Neymar, no longer on the pitch. He had been sent off.
Bayern won 1-0 at Leipzig to gain a seven-point lead with seven matches left. The Bundesliga title, one of six trophies they collected from the disrupted 2019-20 season, looks safe.
PSG, on the other hand, skate on thin ice. With seven Ligue 1 games left, they trail Lille by three points, having lost 1-0 at home to their upstart challengers on a wretched day that culminated with Neymar’s red card.
How much of that baggage PSG manage to leave behind when they kick off their Champions League quarter-final at Bayern on Wednesday is part of the challenge for head coach, Mauricio Pochettino.
He is relatively fresh to the job, but has some experience of rollercoaster title-races – with Tottenham Hotspur – and indeed of reversing the odds, as he did with Spurs in 2019, on a journey to a European Cup final.
________________________________________________
Raging Neymar sent off for kicking
________________________________________________
But he has very little silverware from a lauded managerial career. When he won the French Super Cup, a first trophy as a head coach, in only his third match after his January appointment at PSG, Pochettino was inheriting a prize earned by last season’s successful league campaign, under Thomas Tuchel.
Since replacing Tuchel, Pochettino’s path has been far from smooth. He has overseen four PSG league defeats in 14 matches, not the sort of ratio a club who have been France’s champions seven times in the last eight, extravagantly-funded, years are used to.
Pochettino highlighted a problem of “consistency” of “ups and downs” after the Lille setback. He avoided judgment on Neymar’s hot-tempered departure from the field, in the 90th minute. The Brazilian was involved in various confrontations with Lille’s Tiago Djalo, who had also been shown a second yellow card, as the two players returned to their dressing-rooms.
Pochettino needs his superstar calm for Bayern, closer to the version of Neymar that helped to drive Tuchel’s PSG to last season’s Champions League final, against Bayern.
At the end of that, Neymar was in tears after the 1-0 defeat. He had toiled and often galvanised PSG to a historic high, their first-ever European Cup final and fallen tantalisingly short at the last step.
The pressure on PSG to win club football’s biggest prize, and on the game’s most expensive player, the €222m Neymar, bought from Barcelona to deliver a Champions League, weighs heavy.
A re-run of last season’s final at the last-eight stage is the hurdle that was least welcome when the draw for the quarter-finals was made.
Hansi Flick, the Bayern head coach, insists what happened in the Lisbon final last August counts for nothing. “For us, it’s irrelevant. New game, different players, and PSG have a new coach as well.”
The loss of Lewandowski is a significant difference, and Bayern may also miss striker Serge Gnabry, who missed training with a sore throat.
A PSG with Neymar and Kylian Mbappe in harness, with their Mbappe-inspired 4-1 win at Barcelona in the last round in the rear-view mirror, are entitled to imagine they have the superior attacking options.
“They have enormous quality going forward,” said Flick. “That’s what we have to stop. It’s about keeping our shape when we are in possession, and minding out for our defensive positions. But we’ve been conceding fewer goals and been tighter at closing up gaps, which will be important.”
Pochettino has absences to compensate for. Marco Verratti and Alessandro Florenzi, both part of his preferred XI, are out, having returned positive Covid-19 tests. Leandro Paredes, his midfield organiser, is suspended, while Mauro Icardi, the striker and Laywin Kurzawa, the left-back, are injured. Of equal concern is the rickety recent form.
