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winners
Mauricio Pochettino
This is a measure of football's extreme rise according to which nights like these put Pochettino's reputation on the razor's edge. If Tottenham had lost 2-0 to Wembley on Wednesday night, their outperformance in the Premier League would have been forgotten amid a wave of questions from those who had already decided their answers. The dominant accusation would be: when conditions are difficult, Tottenham will stop.
But this knife tip – and the pressure it creates – means that we should congratulate Pochettino even more when he comes back again brilliantly, and Wednesday only reinforced the remarkable work that this director has done and continues to do. make.
Without two of his best offensive players, Tottenham was close to the leaders of the Bundesliga and was probably the best offensive team in Europe this season and certainly the best outside the Premier League. Pochettino will lead his team in the last eight games of the Champions League for the first time, less than a return match.
Over the past 116 days, Tottenham has played 26 games in four competitions. It would be a painful program for one of the top six players in the Premier League, but Tottenham has a lean team that has been ravaged by absentees. A list of players who missed at least one match during this 116 day period: Davinson Sanchez, Jan Vertonghen, Ben Davies, Serge Aurier, Eric Dier, Victor Wanyama, Sissoko Moussa, Harry Winks, Dele Alli, Son Heung-min , Lucas Moura, Harry Kane.
When the race started, Tottenham was suspended from a lead in the Champions League and his ability to rank among the top four was widely questioned. They won 20 of these 26 matches. Given the circumstances of their injuries and the stadium fiasco, it is outrageous.
But it is Pochettino's great strength: to fight with a hand tied behind his back and yet able to deflect punches and attack his own bodily wounds. When tokens are out of order, at half-time or in the context of an entire season, it brings together all available components and integrates them into a team well above the sum of its parts. He's magic, you know.
Tottenham Supporters
You can usually judge the success of a football club based on its discomfort for a certain group of supporters of its rivals. After every tweet that has dared to praise Pochettino's exploits over the last two years, Arsenal fans have been angry at prejudices and / or hyperbole.
But when a reporter tweeted his Wembley report last night, an Arsenal supporter gave the match. "Yes, but they will not even have pbaded the quarter-finals," was the answer. After seven consecutive Champions League playoffs in the last leg, it is difficult to succeed. Tottenham supporters will have entered London offices and schools with a spring in their legs on Thursday morning.
Thomas Tuchel
The only thing missing from the golden project of Paris Saint-Germain is a high level manager. The fast investment in the game team has allowed this super club to bring together an impressive number of individual talents. They still have to appoint a trainer worthy of knitting everything together. Tuchel is good, but was not considered one of the best coaches in the world at the time of his appointment.
He was charged with changing perceptions, not just of himself. PSG will never be universally loved or objectively attractive, but there is nothing to be mean if you do not want to win everything.
The PSG joins Manchester United as two of the biggest underperformers in the Champions League in recent years, at least according to their financial resources. However, if Old Trafford is generally convinced that returning to first place in European football will take time, Tuchel does not have as much patience. He must succeed where Unai Emery and Laurent Blanc have failed, otherwise he will lose his job. The failures before his arrival could have reduced the pressure on Tuchel, but they had the opposite effect.
On the way to every match I attend (for work, I'm not a complete loon), I try to spend 15 minutes thinking about where I think the match will be won and lost and who, I think, will win, and I will concede that I made United slightly favorites on Tuesday. The absence of PSG from two of its top three strikers, the recent defensive defense and the Champions League gremlins are merged with United's unbridled optimism that seemed tangible.
So did we underestimate the PSG? Have we unfairly judged Tuchel on the mistakes of his predecessors? Does beating four and five in Ligue One persuade us that PSG is poorly equipped for difficult and competitive battles? Perhaps. Tuchel's team certainly had more quality, more resilience and more tactical cohesion than his opponents. In the last ten minutes, they also totally eliminated United's match to the cacophony of "Olés".
Everything is going very well on Tuchel, baduming the PSG avoids another round-trip disaster. His team achieved the outstanding performance of this week's Champions League and thus changed the majority opinion of his team. Low will and vulnerable? Not on this proof.
His Heung-min
Eleven goals in his last 12 games at Tottenham, when his coach and club need him the most. He never moans, he plays where you want him, he is still only 26 years old and he is too often involved in the crucial moments of crucial matches to make it a coincidence. There may be more talented players in the Premier League than Son, but there certainly can not be a player who is a greater pleasure to manage.
Harry winks with the eye
Prior to 2018/19, Winks had only begun his career in 12 league games. Now he's playing the central pivot role in the midfield for a team heading to the quarter-finals of the Champions League and blossoming with such responsibility. It's damn awesome.
Nicolo Zaniolo
Do not be fooled into thinking that Kylian Mbappe had the monopoly of Champions League excellence on Tuesday by Bright Young Thing. Zaniolo had only started two European matches before this week, two complete defeats. The 19-year-old, however, stole the show at Stadio Olimpico with two goals in six minutes, giving Roma a slight advantage over Porto in the second leg.
At her age, I customized (hurt) my own jeans, I tried to be cool (bad) and I got drunk (good) to try to talk (badly) to girls. And here is this kid who runs his club in the Champions League. It will not happen.
The Premier League of Rome refuses
Aleksandar Kolarov, sold by Manchester City because he could not really defend and he had no interest in learning.
Federico Fazio, who flopped at Tottenham before being sold for less than £ 3m.
Davide Santon, who has never settled in Newcastle United and has probably invented a machine to go back in time is still only 28 years old.
Steven Nzonzi, who had a largely positive effect on Stoke City but never really dominated the Premier League as he had wished.
The four former Premier League players all played in a knockout match in the Champions League on Tuesday night. The lucky jesters.
Santiago Solari
A coach who never felt like a substitute teacher and was in danger of being sacked after Real Madrid's 3-0 defeat at Eibar in November and again when he lost 2-0 to home against Real Sociedad in early January. Since the second defeat, Real has played six games in the Liga and Champions League and has won all six, scoring 16 goals. They are back in second place and only six points behind Barcelona, but in Europe, something special could still be built. They could not, is not it?
Karim Benzema
The attacker who has lived permanently in the shadow of Cristiano Ronaldo and who has suffered unfair and unflattering comparisons steals at the age of 31 years. Benzema has scored seven goals in his last six games and became Wednesday the fourth player in history to reach 60 goals in the European Cup. .
Kylian Mbappe
Our first winner. We feared that Mbappe would suffer in the absence of his stellar teammates. Sometimes, one quick step like the other, sits on the wing and waits for the defenders to forget him as a child who remains silent while a group of adults enters the evening.
But he is too handsome. Observe Mbappe's move for PSG's second goal, deep to create a space before running between central defenders to perfectly clock his run. The end, placed in front of David de Gea desperate, was achieved with the slightest opening of the foot on the ground. Proof that Mbappe is not a big striker as we know him, all tendons and sprints start. There are aesthetics to complement the athletics.
Angel di Maria
A night that started with Di Maria being booed every time he touched the ball, Tuchel screamed at his frail touches and hit a nadir when he was pushed into a metal fence at Old Trafford ended with the Argentinian howls k off "in front of the crowd at Old Trafford as his team celebrated their second goal. Now that's a 90-minute story for you.
Marco Verratti
The PSG's third player has been highly praised and probably the most influential of Old Trafford. Ander Herrera received many accolades for his performances in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's midfield, but the comparison was extremely unflattering. Herrera adapted to the tempo and timbre of Tuesday's match. Verratti dictated both.
losers
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer
It was always going to happen at some point; no one goes through life without hurting himself. On Monday, Solskjaer wondered why there was no reason for Manchester United not to win the Champions League. He then spent late Tuesday evening admitting that he had just seen why. Manchester United are not as good as Paris Saint-Germain. At the ten-word correspondence report, it's a doozy.
C & # 39; was a horrible baptism of fire on the biggest stage for Solskjaer. Losing two of your best strikers before the match (as PSG did) is one thing, but it allows at least one manager to create a tactical plan on the training ground and for sure. ensure that the team is ready to adopt it. It's so hard to lose two points at half-time. This requires a new plan to concoct and detail players within ten minutes.
Solskjaer probably made a mistake. Romelu Lukaku on the right would surely have been a better option than Alexis Sanchez, and even bringing Fred on Mata and pushing Pogba forward, or Dalot on the back and pushing Ashley Young forward might have worked better. It's easy to say after the fact, but Juan Mata and Sanchez have imposed on United to not be allowed to do in the last third and therefore to defend easily. This gave the PSG the license to attack and seal the victory.
But Solskjaer will learn from that. His future does not deserve to be decided by an exit from the Champions League at PSG, a club that has more departments than United. But it was at least proof that, with or without Solskjaer, it's a long comeback for the club. Solskjaer must now ensure that United can at least go to base camp next season. The top four is everything. That's what will decide – or should – decide his future.
Alexis Sanchez
I will not go into detail because a) it's sad and b) Sarah Winterburn has already done. But Sanchez is now completely broken, permanently injured by the effects of practicing a high intensity sport in a high intensity style for a decade almost without interruption. Arsenal did not succeed much when he sold his key players, but they had Sanchez Bob.
Borussia Dortmund collapses in second half
If we attribute to Pochettino the onslaught of Tottenham in the second half after a difficult first period, Dortmund deserves a lot of criticism for his soft acceptance of defeat and his shambolic defense. Before the match, Ali Tweedale of the Daily Telegraph had written before the match that six of the last seven goals conceded were centers, while Tottenham had scored more goals than any other team among the top five European leagues. The Spurs scored only one header, but the three goals conceded by Dortmund came from the centers. Lucien Favre has a huge problem to solve.
Dortmund also shows signs of crunching under the weight of expectations, having been the outstanding team in Europe during the first half of the season. So far in February, the Favre team gave up a lead at Eintracht Frankfurt to lose league points, collapsed out of the Pokal DFB despite a double lead in overtime, lost a three-goal lead in the last 15 minutes against Hoffenheim 0 in Tottenham at Wembley. In 165 minutes after half-time in their last three games, Dortmund conceded eight goals. Bayern Munich will feel the blood.
Ashley Young
This is no longer a good right back for a team with the ambitions of Manchester United. This should not be a heartless criticism, as Young has played an admirable role as a short-term position to become a long-term option.
But this must stop now before it becomes embarrbading. The push on Di Maria was pure stupidity that should have earned him a second yellow card, the action of a man frustrated by his own limitations. After spending 19 million pounds for Diogo Dalot – described by José Mourinho as the best young rear right of Europe – United must now start it by default.
Paul Pogba
The reverse Di Maria. Each Pogba contact in the first half caused a stirring of excitement at Old Trafford, which was justified when he overtook Presnel Kimpembe, then beat the same player with fast feet at the edge of the area of repair. But as United became frustrated, Pogba strained more and more to grab the tie in his hands and remained desperate. The madness on Dani Alves should have earned him a red card.
Ajax
Losers because they lost (I got used to that after four years), but Ajax recorded 19 shots and almost doubled the number of Real Madrid efforts. They are unhappy to have faced European champions and European champions of success.
Take a moment to appreciate Ajax's new bright future. Even if it ends with a series of expensive exports, it is so that a club like Ajax must thrive. Develop, sculpt, sell and reinvest. On Tuesday, their team had seven players, 21, a 22-year-old and a 19-year-old. From toekomst is helder.
Daniel Storey
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