When it comes to falling apart, PSG are the greatest team in Europe - The Warm-Up

Oh, lads. Oh, lads. For a project so singularly obsessed with the Champions League, for a club so defined by its pursuit of the biggest prize of them all, it really is remarkable just how bad PSG are at high-stakes knockout football.

This is a badness that goes beyond just playing poorly and losing. This is a badness built on a foundation of excellence, even brilliance. To lose like PSG, the team first has to manoeuvre itself into a position where the PSG win looks likely, perhaps even certain. Only then can the true magnificence of the PSG collapse unfold. That's what gives this the tragicomic edge. It's not that they lost it: it's that they had it, and they dropped it. And it made a big clanging noise and rolled around all over the place and everybody looked and everybody saw and then it broke.

Connoiseurs of the collapse will be debating for years whether last night's dissolution against Real Madrid was better (or, er, worse) than Barcelona five years back. By the Warm-Up's reckoning it was at least slightly funnier, given it all came so, so quickly. They were cantering through after an hour; they were level and worried after 76 minutes; and then 10 seconds after kicking off again they were humiliated.

All three goals were scored by Karim Benzema, a man of monstrous calmness. But all three were made for him, ultimately, by PSG. Gigi Donnarumma's indolence leading to the first and sparking the collapse. Neymar trying to pass the ball through Luka Modrić ahead of the second, then PSG's midfield parting like silk curtains. And then that 10 seconds: where's the ball, where's the ball, why is it here, what's going on, oh nooooooo. If you needed an illustration of what football can do to a footballer, consider Marquinhos, a vastly experienced footballer of prodigious talent, stabbing the ball blindly back across his own penalty area, straight to the feet of Benzema, all because everything is going wrong very quickly and very loudly.

The worst part is… well, there are a lot of worst parts. But one of the worst parts is: they'd done the difficult bit. Real Madrid had come out at 100 miles an hour, or as close to that as everybody's aging bodies would allow, and PSG had weathered that. Kylian Mbappé had done something ridiculous three times, and one of those had been legal. And Madrid had come out better in the second half, and PSG were getting through that too. And then: Donnarumma, Modrić, Marquinhos; Benzema, Benzema, Benzema; goal, goal, goal.

After the game, Mauricio Pochettino lamented the fact that VAR chose not to get involved in the first goal, claiming that Benzema's shoulder-barge on Donnarumma was just the wrong side of the line. Perhaps; perhaps not. It's interesting to wonder, though, what might have happened had the goal been chalked off. As soon as Donnarumma gave the ball away, the spirit and self-control and competence drained out of PSG like bathwater spiralling down the plughole. Their heads went, followed quickly by their hearts, backbones, guts, lungs, and any other part of the body one might need to play football. (Feet, perhaps.) Would a reversal of the goal have put all that stuff back? Or would the metaphorical evacuation, once started, have carried on regardless? From "We're falling apart!" to "We're not falling apart!" ... but then, a dark mutter in the back of the mind. "We're not falling apart … yet."

All academic, of course, although our bet is that once the wobble starts, it can't be unwobbled. And if you want an illustration of what football can do to a footballer, consider David Alaba celebrating the winning goal. There he is, holding a plastic foldaway chair, waving a plastic foldaway chair, saluting the Bernabéu with a plastic foldaway chair. He doesn't know why. Nor does anybody else. But there he is and there PSG go, into the long lingering twilight of another collapse that was at once shocking and damningly familiar.

Obviously the game was fun on its own terms. But the real question is: how does this affect the transfer market? We knew before the tie began that this confrontation — Kylian Mbappé's current club against Kylian Mbappé's maybe-possibly next club — was going to form some part of the great overarching Mbappé story, as it will one day be written. It just wasn't clear which way that was going to go.

One that is clear, and gets clearer every game, is just how appallingly good he is. He put the ball in the net three times last night, unstoppable on all three occasions save by somebody with a flag. And who'd be that somebody waving that flag? There's Mbappé: stepping over the ball, turning Thibaut Courtois into a regretful pretzel, bringing the entire continent to its feet with a unified shout of "All hail the second coming of the one true Ronaldo!" And there's you, flag in the air, getting things right and doing your job and ruining everybody's fun. There's officiating, and then there's cultural vandalism, and sometimes they're the same thing.

Back to the transfer, or maybe not. It's not a particularly healthy way to watch football, looking at the present for the traces of the history that will be written in the future, but sometimes it's unavoidable. We can say with absolute certainty that last night will feature front and centre in the eventual story of whatever happens next. Perhaps it will run: "Mbappé agrees to lead PSG's rebuild after this latest catastrophe." More likely, you suspect, we'll be looking at something like: "This was the night that Mbappé knew for sure that whatever was happening at PSG, whatever kept happening to PSG, he had to get out."

Or even, perhaps: "It was a sharp March evening in Madrid when Kylian Mbappé decided, once and for all, that there was no greater place to be in all football than the pitch of the Santiago Bernabéu, on which he stood defeated, and no finer ambition than to play second fiddle to Karim Benzema." From the moment the balls came out to give us this game, the narrative potential has been thick enough to taste. Now it's just a question of waiting to see how it resolves.

Oh hey, Manchester City were playing Sporting. City had a big lead from the first leg, right? Wonder what happened over there...

Righto. Carry on.

A suggestion. With goals like this, the ones that are either precisely floated pieces of angular genius or, perhaps, overhit crosses, how about we just all give the benefit of the doubt to the attacker? Nobody gets hurt, except the goalkeepers and they're used to it. And the world, this thing we imagine together, contains just a little bit more genius.

To lose one of Spain's biggest coaching jobs can be considered unfortunate. To lose two, in less than a year: that's heartbreaking. But Julen Lopetegui, now at Sevilla, seems to be doing ok with it all, at least if this interview with Sid Lowe is anything to go by. And it's worth clicking through for the family picture of Lopetegui's dad holding his sisters.

Have you been wondering how Marcelo Bielsa's time at Leeds is all tangled up with Argentinean politics and liberation theology? Yep, us too. Fortunately for everybody, Jon Mackenzie has this fascinating piece in Tribune looking into the whole conjunction. It's all about the fans.

Let's get Europa. There's too many last-16 games to list in full here, but the double bill of Sevilla vs. West Ham followed by Atalanta vs. Bayer Leverkusen looks particularly tempting. Or there's Barcelona against Galatasaray, that works too.

We also have action in the Premier League, as Steven Gerrard takes Aston Villa to Leeds. Metaphorically. He probably won't be driving the bus. Although, now we think about it, if we had to rank Premier League managers in order of likelihood to hold a coach-driving license, we might well have Gerrard in second. A distant second, well behind Sean Dyche.