Since a man with a straw hat and a briefcase full of millions (222, specifically) showed up at the FC Barcelona offices to take Neymar, PSG has become a huge enemy for the Blaugrana club and its people. That episode that marked a before and after in international football, giving way to new leaders with little track record but a lot of money, was followed by other more or less traumatic ones. Messi’s march in the same direction as that of the Brazilian, that of Dembélé later… They all contained the same implicit message: money is abundant in Paris through Qatar and is scarce in Barcelona squandered by successive directives. The paradigm shift is so real that tonight the one who starts as the favorite is the nouveau riche, when it had always been the other way around. Xavi’s team is on the rise but on the other side, led by a guerrilla Luis Enrique from what we heard yesterday, there is a differential footballer called Mbappé. Everything indicates that he will go to Real Madrid. PSG is definitely a sort of French-style Madrid for Barça. A new enemy in the imagination. The tie that begins today will decide whether the distances are widened or shortened between both worlds.
Xavi and the lineup
Xavi Hernández has been living more peacefully since he announced his early goodbye for next summer. His team has improved and he has the opportunity to make an unexpected leap to the semifinals that would multiply the requests from the club for him to unpack his packed bags. Xavi smiles at this new panorama. From vilified to seduced. That’s football, let alone Barça. Xavi has been “with a well-worked match plan for days,” they say in the locker room. The ten days without competing have gone well for the group. The lineup contains few doubts. Ter Stegen, Koundé, Araújo, Cubarsí and Cancelo will play in defense; Christensen, Sergi Roberto and Gündogan in the midfield, and Raphinha, Lamine Yamal and Lewandowski in attack, with the Brazilian acting as a hinge with the interior to further protect the team. The only variation could be the incorporation of De Jong in place of Sergi Roberto. The Dutchman has recovered from his injury and is looking forward to it. If Pedri comes in he will do it from the bench. Fermín will start as a substitute as well. Behind closed doors, Frenkie de Jong was one of the players who was most happy when he saw the PSG ball come out. The Dutchman experienced the last European tie in Paris behind closed doors. Barcelona were eliminated, but it put fear in the French’s bodies.
Luis Enrique’s other comeback
Luis Enrique will go down in history as the coach of the comeback of all comebacks leading Barça and precisely against the club he now coaches. A modern game technician who relies on the innovations brought to him by technology, his tone in press conferences is more rudimentary, an aspect that has earned him quite a few detractors. In the locker rooms he achieves atmospheres of granite unity and his teams tend to go from strength to strength. At that moment before takeoff, the Asturian is with PSG. His team is versatile and tactically rich. And he goes after the rival from minute one. For tonight’s performance he must decide which right back he chooses to cover the loss of the suspended Achraf Akimi, and which forward will accompany Dembélé and Mbappé.
How to cancel Mbappé
Xavi has a plan to stop Mbappé, a global responsibility of the team but personified in two players. On the one hand, Koundé, if the forward drops to the left wing, the one that has given him the most performance during his career. But if Mbappé focuses his position, a traditional surveillance by Araújo is contemplated, with a stickiness that at times will seem like a man-marking, a countercultural custom in today’s football but used from time to time as an exceptional resource . Do you remember Maffeo chasing Messi in Montilivi?
The Dembélé mosquito
Few aliases are more accurate for a footballer than mosquito. That’s how his Barcelona teammates baptized him in his first season. For the rival it is annoying because his choices on the pitch are unpredictable. It is likely that he himself does not discern them. An indecipherable character, he never quite took flight at Barcelona despite leaving details of a great star. His injuries and inconstancy exhausted his most fervent followers. To everyone except Xavi, who would give half a finger to have him on his side. The one from Terrassa and Dembélé have exchanged mobile messages these days. Good humor and jokes about what will happen in the tie. Luis Enrique sometimes takes him away from the band to do damage inside. In Barcelona that solution would have caused tachycardia due to the Frenchman’s ease in losing balls. Luis Enrique may be the coach capable of ordering it. Although chaos and anarchy are actually both his problem and his virtue.
Laminated Yamal
He is 16 years old but in today’s previews his weight at Barça will be associated with that of Mbppé at PSG. This is the Barça club and this is how the creature has earned it, a teenager who boldly champions the new farm of La Masia, a tireless factory of new phenomena. The debut will be shared with Pau Cubarsí, established as a center back at 17 years old. The Blaugrana youth team excels in times of war economy. Perhaps it should also do so in good times as a future solution and a retaining wall against clubs like PSG. We will have to wait and see what reading is made about it with the tie over.
