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It's a constant for PSG. A club that has got used to playing its season on a match. The impression is sharper than ever. In Ligue 1, Paris strolls. With fourteen victories in fourteen days and fifteen points ahead of his runner-up, Thomas Tuchel's team is sailing along a long calm river. But it's a real tidal wave watching him. Long before early March, where Paris has lost its European illusions in the last two years. It seemed already early to see the PSG disappear from the big leagues before spring. So before winter …
At this point, it is impossible to say who will come out of this group C even tighter than expected, where the four teams stand in just two points two days from the end of the group phase. The uncertainty is not total for all that. Paris knows it. A defeat at the Park against Liverpool combined with a win at home against the Red Star of Belgrade would already condemn Parisians to stay on the doorstep. There is no need to re-read this scenario to understand that there is nothing improbable.
Liverpool and Naples are not references
PSG did not know how to write another story. We do not know the end yet. But the beginning has an air of déjà-vu. Paris has not grown up yet. When he has to raise the level, he remains desperately small. Like those two miserable points taken in three games against the Reds and Napoli. Out of nine possible, it is little. The finding of a club that fails to climb to the level of references of the Old Continent was clear in recent seasons. Another begins to be clarified. Because the English club and his Italian counterpart do not box exactly in the same category as Barça or Real.
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The last two European hangmen of PSG are, with Juventus Turin, Bayern Munich and Atletico Madrid, the references of the Champions League in the last five years. Liverpool, despite its status as runner-up European title, and Naples, which has never exceeded the knockout stage of the current decade, in no way display the same regularity in C1. Paris was unable to join the smallest circle of European behemoths. His current situation is that he also struggles to impose a superiority on clubs that are not part of it.
Stifling financial consequences
What is watching this PSG is the observation of a sporting regression that a road exit in the pool phase would confirm after two consecutive eliminations from the knockout stages. And especially of a failure of its policy of great means. The thunderous transfers of Neymar and Kylian Mbappé were to give a second wind to the PSG in the Champions League after the trauma of the "remontada". They would rather symbolize his choking, at the moment. At the level of the results in the competition queen of the European Cups to begin. But not only.
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The impact of an elimination would be much broader. Financially, they would plummet a PSG which necessarily count on the cash inflow of a qualification for the round of 16 in the context of financial fair play. Paris is condemned to tighten its belt to amortize the costs of transfers and salaries of Neymar and Mbappé. He was already forced to make sales to achieve this. They will only be more mandatory in case of failure in the group phase of the most lucrative competition. While Paris already lacks depth of strength, especially in the middle.
The fear of emptiness
An elimination would be also, especially, catastrophic for the image of the club. That of the PSG is already largely chipped by the revelations of the documents of Football Leaks these last weeks. Especially those concerning ethnic registration. From an extraterritorial point of view, the club of the capital is probably going through its most important crisis since the arrival of QSI in 2011. If the scenario of the worst was to be written Wednesday night in the Park and Naples, it is coupled with the most resounding sports failure of the Qatari era. It is a big gap at the edge of which is the PSG.
It has not fallen yet. More than ever, hope gives life to Paris Saint-Germain. That of finally being at the height of the event. This scenario is not improbable either. Defeat of the Reds who have not shone in their travels Champions League this season, with two defeats in Naples (1-0) and Belgrade (2-0), also seems in the ropes of the formation of Thomas Tuchel. And to offer at the same time a "final" in Serbia, where Paris would still play his season on a match left or double. This story that Paris knows so well is still the best he can write.
Angel Di Maria scored a crucial goal against NaplesGetty Images
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