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Madrid, Thursday

Mauricio Pochettino is facing the sack at Paris Saint-Germain after overseeing their Champions League capitulation against Real Madrid.

Le Parisien in France said both Pochettino and the French club’s Sporting Director Leonardo would both pay the price for the defeat, which transpired thanks to a stunning 17-minute hat-trick from Karim Benzema.

‘The present is all I can deal with,’ said the under-fire manager after the 3-1 defeat saw them crash out of Europe.

‘As for the future, what will be will be. We play to compete and to win. It’s a hard blow to take but we have to keep a calm head now.’

That ‘que sera sera’ response will not go down well with the club’s president Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who Spanish television reporter Monica Marchante reported was incandescent with rage after the defeat.

There were serious accusations that the PSG president went banging on doors looking for the referee’s dressing room post match.

Pochettino also blamed the match officials. ‘How can I explain it? It’s easy to explain. But I think the biggest mistake is from VAR for their first goal,’ he said.

‘When we conceded the nerves set in and with the sense of injustice we were too open to concede further. At 1-1 we were still through but we conceded two more.

Latest victim

‘Madrid had nothing to lose at 1-1 to take the game to extra-time and we could not react to the situation.’

Madrid were set to be the latest victims of another Mbappe masterclass at the Santiago Bernabeu after the 23-year-old ran them ragged for the best part of an hour and fired in to put PSG 1-0 up on the night, 2-0 ahead on aggregate.

But Madrid came storming back as Benzema capitalised on a mistake by PSG goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma and then scored an incredible double in two minutes, the third coming within 11 seconds after PSG had kicked off.

When the full-time whistle confirmed their 3-2 aggregate victory, many of Madrid’s players dropped to their knees and looked up to the sky, as much perhaps in disbelief as joy.

“Every game is a final now for us in the Champions League and La Liga but today we showed that Real Madrid is alive,” said Benzema.

This week marked the five-year anniversary of PSG losing 6-1 to Barcelona having led from the first leg 4-0. This feels even worse for the French club who added Lionel Messi to Kylian Mbappe and Neymar in a bid to win their first Champions League. 

A victorious Carlo Ancelotti meanwhile said: ‘It was the magic of the stadium with a fantastic history and a club with a fantastic history. It’s an unforgettable night.

‘The game changed after their first goal and the atmosphere was the key to that.’-AFP