PSG managed to give a huge slap to a Real Madrid that arrived at the Parc des Princes not to play the game. Carlo Ancelotti said it before the match, no one would be surprised if this duel for the round of 16 in the Champions League was actually a final. However, the Italian coach was unable to transfer the importance he gave the game to the field of play because literally The number of times that Merengue stepped on Gianluigi Donnarumma’s area was counted on the fingers of one hand.
And while it is true that the midfield that Mauricio Pochettino proposed gave a superlative performance, the fact that Real Madrid was constantly withdrawn helped a lot. Obviously all the spotlight was taken by Kylian Mbappé, he converted a cosmic goal to beat a Thibaut Courtois who seemed impenetrable. However, much of the criticism in the French media was directed at Lionel Messi because they only kept the penalty he missed, not all the other things he did during the match. They did not even appreciate that, despite the fact that they stopped the penalty, He constantly asked for the ball and it was he who took charge of the team.
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What grade did they give Lionel Messi?
‘L’Equipe’ is a prestigious outlet, there is no doubt about them, but when it comes to analyzing and evaluating the matches, they are quite questionable. While Kylian Mbappé was given a concise 8, the same score given to the Belgian goalkeeper, the seven-time Ballon d’Or winner was given a lapidary 3, being the second worst of the match (the worst was Dani Carvajal with 2). And the reality is that it is quite unfair at one point because Lionel Messi had to fulfill a false 9 task, but at the same time he was the driver of the team in attack because Marco Verratti did not accelerate in the last meters.
Beyond the counterproductive fact that Messi was the only reference between Éder Militão and David Alaba, for Mbappé to have the free band, it is not that the Argentine did not fulfill that task badly. You also have to take into account that he always had Casemiro and Toni Kroos on top of him, it was a constant that both midfielders were on top of him. In addition, Real Madrid desperately grouped 9 footballers at the door of the area. Not even Mbappé himself was able to generate too many scoring chances, because it is true, he overwhelmed Carvajal a few times but did not create clearly dangerous situations.
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In fact, the only clear goal move that the Frenchman had (besides the goal himself) was thanks to Messi putting a ball to him millimetrically behind Militão’s back. Even the goal that Mbappé converts at the end, leaving aside the genius of the play, is thanks to the fact that Neymar and Messi take two marks each. While the Brazilian misleads Federico Valverde and Casemiro, the Argentine was with Kroos and Alaba. Of course, later on a tile Mbappé cleans Militão and Lucas Vázquezbut it was exclusively because it was a play where it was ‘clarified’ (as they say in basketball).
And it is that in the end it only seems that a player did a good or a bad performance depending on whether or not he scored a goal. Messi did not have the fine aim, especially in the handful of free throws that he had in his favor, but keeping that is a small part of what was a very tactical game for the Argentine. It is always common to see a Messi that when the ball arrives, he goes down to the midfield to get the ball, but in this case he had to have the patience for the ball to reach him in three quarters of the pitch, and from there he He was in charge of the offense. Does the penalty cover the great game he played? probably, but the reality is that there are many other factors to consider.
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