Just as the Champions League starts, the nouveau riche of continental football come onto the scene.
PSG plays disjointed football, it did not connect in its galactic period and it does not do so now, although Luis Enrique's hand is beginning to be noticed. PSG plays hard, provides supreme moments and that is enough to beat Dortmund (2-0). However, his game continues to lack something, perhaps soul, perhaps oil.
PSG neither grows nor matures, but it has resources, and such a range of possibilities ends up solving the ballot. Messi and Neymar are no longer there, although Mbappé, infallible on the penalty spot, Dembélé or an inspired Hakimi, a winger who handles himself like a winger, are around. The cut that allows him for the second Parisian goal is school.
City, in theory the greatest of the greats, relaxes and trusts against the fledgling Red Star, and goes into the half at a disadvantage after Bukari's goal just before half-time.
The partial surprises the experts, since City, nouveau riche in the manner of PSG, does not usually get entangled like PSG does (for some reason it defends the title from last year), and not many boasts are expected from the Serbian side.
(Where was the splendor of the times of Prosinecki, Mihajlovic, Pancev or Savicevic, the champion of '91?).
Logic makes its way later, already in the second half, when the Serbs dismantle (effectively, nothing remains of Prosinecki or Savicevic) and Guardiola's team corrects the mistake. Two goals from Julián Álvarez and one more from Rodri registered the final 3-1.
Atlético is not a nouveau riche but, in its day, it had moved around Europe with the broad chest, the flat chest of a newcomer to the elite, godson of Simeone: it has played two finals with Cholo on the bench.
Good 'ol times!
Now it doesn't look like it did then, although its main lines are repeated, like a mantra. Namely: a generous defensive line, with Savic at the axis, a chronic detachment from the ball, temperance in the center of the field, the dynamism of Griezmann and the pivot of Morata.
Apparently, those wickers are enough for him.
Their game is a spider web that envelops Lazio, the Romans look trapped despite the insistence of Immobile and Luis Alberto, top-class players for whom Lazio is too small.
Simeone is an artist when it comes to reconstructing the project. He does it year after year, now Koke is injured, now João Félix or Yannick Carrasco leave, another spirit dedicated to the petrodollar: he has a replacement for everything. This time, the replacement is Pablo Barrios, a twenty-year-old who is making his debut in the Champions League and shouts:
-Here I am!
He does so by hitting a shot from outside the area that Kamada deflects and surprises Provedel, the Lazio goalkeeper, who remains on his knees with his arms on his hips.
Nobody would have said then that Provedel himself was going to correct Lazio's drift: Atlético, hesitant in the League, seems to have tied the game, and yet gets lost in the last minute of stoppage time, already in the 94th minute, when Provedel appears between the lines and shoots a goal in the face of Simeone's desperation: there is no respect for his watermark.
