PSG have finally lifted their Champions League curse - The Warm-Up
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Updated 13/08/2020 at 18:13 GMT
The Champions League lockdown mini-tournament is off to a spectacular start
Neymar and Kylian Mbappe celebrate PSG progressing past Atalanta in the Champions League
Image credit: Getty Images
THURSDAY’S BIG STORIES
A win for the big guy
Oh, it so nearly happened. Curses don’t have to be real for football teams to believe in them, and as PSG dominated their Champions League quarter-final but kept missing their chances, you started to wonder if they were starting to wonder. The fake crowd grew audibly nervous. Neymar looked increasingly concerned.
And then the weight of common sense and all those thousands of millions finally told. How could little Atalanta, brave and plucky Atalanta, hold out against the goalscoring inevitability of … Marquinhos. And Maxim Choupo-Moting? Wait, what?
Ah, okay, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe got the assists. Presumably the Brazilian, having missed a couple of decent chances, is feeling more than a little relieved this morning. So too Thomas Tuchel, who began the game with a weird broken team that Jose Mourinho would have enjoyed, and ended it with every attacker he could find piled onto the pitch: not so much a formation as a howl of desperation.
The end result was a great game, a 2-1 win to the heavy favourites, and PSG’s first Champions League semi-final since 1995. That time around, they were shut out over two legs by Fabio Capello’s brutally well-organised AC Milan. Good job there aren’t many teams like that around any more … oh, hang on, they might be playing Atletico. Ah.
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Godspeed Atalanta
That means it’s goodbye to Atalanta, who were debutants at the start of their Champions League campaign but became, by the end of it, the second team of pretty much the entire continent. From losing their first three games of the group stage, to coming within a few minutes of a semi-final. Absolutely ridiculous behaviour.
In a way it was an atypical ending: we saw little of the giddy attacking that has defined Atalanta’s charge through Serie A and the Champions League. But it seems to churlish to complain too much. It’s been a long and stressful season. And PSG were playing pretty well. Certainly, Gian Piero Gasperini seems pleased:
The people of Bergamo will celebrate anyway, for our sense of belonging, for the team giving all they possibly could. That is what they ask of us. We have resources of passion and ideas, not necessarily of money, but those are a bottomless well and we’ll keep drawing from them in future.
Which is, when you get right down to it, exactly what a football team should be doing with itself. Grazie, ragazzi.
When one Community Shield just isn’t enough
They said it was impossible. They said it couldn’t be done. But those mavericks down at the FA: they’ve only gone and done it. The 2020-21 season will begin with not one but two Community Shields, one after the other. First Manchester City and Chelsea will play for the women’s plate, then Liverpool and Arsenal for the men’s. Never will a curtain have been so thoroughly raised.
This will be the first time that the women’s Community Shield has been contested since 2008, and the first time since the Women’s Super League came into existence in 2011. Which is pretty exciting, all things considered.
Also exciting — or possibly terrifying, depending on your affections — is the team City are putting together. England’s Chloe Kelly and USA’s Sam Mewis have already been confirmed for the new season, and it seems Lucy Bronze and Alex Greenwood will both be coming from Lyon. They want that league. They want that Champions League.
And now they get the chance to either lay down an early statement of intent, or lose a meaningless friendly, result depending. Just as it should be.
IN OTHER NEWS
A big hello to whoever got a little carried away at Rennes’ Champions League qualification party, and stuck the anthem on loop for 15 minutes. Over the stadium loudspeakers. At 3 o’clock in the morning.
RETRO CORNER
Since we’re on a Charity Shield tip, it’s been 25 years — and here we pause to reflect on the passage of time, and the delicate and fragile mortality that binds us all — since Vinny Samways made Tim Flowers look rather silly at Wembley.
HAT TIP
Atalanta may be out of the Champions League, but it’s still worth having a read of this piece from Rory Smith in the New York Times. He looks at how the coronavirus crisis has strengthened the bond between the town of Bergamo and their over-achieving football club.
To Gori, the mayor, the link is even more direct. Atalanta has always been a symbol for the city. In the last few months, it has served as a flag to rally around. Now, though, it can work as a metaphor for Bergamo, a reminder that it is possible to come back, to overcome the odds, to emerge stronger from a time of struggle. “The city can find a reason for optimism in the story of Atalanta," he said. “It can be a sign of the rebirth of the city."
COMING UP
Another delicious slice of Champions League pie tonight, as Red Bull Leipzig face off against Atletico Madrid. Winner gets to try and embarrass PSG. There’s a good amount of snooker on as well...
Tom Adams will be here with the Warm Up tomorrow, although if the weather continues like this we’ll be rebranding as the Cool Down, for everybody’s sake.
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