Paris Saint-Germain Project Needs European Crowning Glory

With Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thiago Silva, Maxwell and Thiago Motta all given Saturday off to rest up while Paris Saint-Germain entertained Lille (the French champions began the afternoon a whopping 24 points clear of second place), it seemed like preparations for the capital club’s Champions League crunch with Chelsea couldn’t have been any smoother.

That, of course, was until the whole Serge Aurier affair—with the Ivorian defender’s subsequent apology covered here by L’Equipe, in French—exploded, which Laurent Blanc and company definitely could have done without. Yet this weekend illustrated exactly where PSG’s strength-in-depth leaves them.

Their talent pool is almost bottomless (the front line was still composed of Angel Di Maria, Edinson Cavani and rising France Under-19 striker Jean-Kevin Augustin), and there can be few excuses when the Blues arrive at the Parc des Princes on Tuesday night, even if the influential Marco Verratti is only just feeling his way back from injury.

This week is big for PSG. They’ve already reached their domestic pinnacle under Blanc, winning the quadruple of Ligue 1/Coupe de France/Coupe de la Ligue/Trophee des Champions last season, so European glory is the one gap in the tapestry. In a way, the 48-year-old is in the same boat as Pep Guardiola.

PSG’s domestic dominance is not in question, so only a meaningful European campaign—so in the case of Paris, at least reaching the final four for the first time—can really save their campaign from being anticlimatic, however total their mastery of league competition.

After three successive quarter-final exits, little else will do for Blanc, even though he inked a contract extension to 2018 in the last few days, as reported by the Press Association (h/t the Guardian). Even since Qatar Sports Investment (QSI) became the club’s major shareholder in 2011, it has been building to this. The ambition is inescapable at the club’s Camp des Loges training complex, out in the suburbs at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, just as it is on the shop floor at the Parc des Princes.

The QSI-sponsored motto stares back at you on every second wall—“revons plus grand” and its English equivalent “dream bigger”. When David Luiz spoke to BT Sport’s Rio Ferdinand in an interview trailed on the channel’s European Football Show on Sunday night, he even ended his statement of hopes for the coming weeks—perhaps unconsciously—with that very phrase.

It was always leading to this. The Ligue 1 title was surprisingly frittered away to little Montpellier in QSI’s first campaign at the helm—they were top when they fired Antoine Kombouare and replaced him with the far more high-spec Carlo Ancelotti—only ever felt like collateral damage, even at the time. So it has proved, as PSG have moved to carve an authentic place among Europe’s elite.

So why, when Chelsea were already vanquished last season, is this tie laced with tension for the Parisians? It’s certainly not an inferiority complex. It’s not even Chelsea’s 12-game unbeaten run (in all competitions) under Guus Hiddink as they salvage some semi-respectability from a nightmarish season.

It’s the fact the comparative statuses of these two European giants have flipped so dramatically since they last faced off 12 months ago. In retrospect, maybe there were signs of the divergent trajectories yet to be taken, as beyond even PSG battling beyond the soon-to-be English champions with a man less, there was the jarring sight of Laurent Blanc tactically outwitting Jose Mourinho.

Let’s underline that first clause, though—these thoughts are very much with the benefit of hindsight. The sense that PSG are simply better than Chelsea is still very much a new one, and that is the bottom line in this two-legged affair.

Blanc and his players performed laudably last year but as—or at least, as far as is possible in a matchup in the Champions League knockout rounds—plucky underdogs, uniting to battle against the odds. This time they are favourites—strong favourites. Favourites to the extent the French media has almost had to manufacture a level of difficulty ahead.

There's the case when L’Equipe’s print edition on the day after Chelsea’s recent draw with Manchester United reasoned Hiddink’s side were dangerous because they could still snatch a draw with United, despite being tentative and weak.

Thibault Camus/Associated Press/Associated Press

It’s a return to this (albeit unlikely) parallel between Blanc and Guardiola. Both have become more than custodians of a transcendent team. Their constant battle is to maintain an appropriate level of intensity among their players in the face of vastly inferior opposition faced on a weekly basis.

The world is waiting to see a flabby, spoiled side caught on the hop by the big (re) step up to the Champions League. That is something Blanc has worked on as feverishly as Guardiola has, in his own very different way, to maintain.

For if we’re talking intensity, few Parc des Princes regulars can have any complaints. Talk all you want about Ligue 1's diminishing standard of competition, but PSG have been absolutely ruthless, unblinking and pitiless this season. The current second-placed side Monaco were hammered 3-0 at Stade Louis II before August was up. Last season’s runners-up, Lyon, were demolished 5-1 at the Parc just before Christmas and have been vanquished twice more in the domestic cups since.

Last season Lyon—champions themselves every year between 2002 and 2008, lest we forget—were right on PSG’s tails until three games from the season’s end. This time, they’ll need binoculars to see the shadows of those coattails. The motivation required to flex those muscles week after week is considerable, and Blanc is to be applauded for coaxing it from his players.

Di Maria’s role at the heart of this shows how far they’ve come. In the week when Ezequiel Lavezzi, an early QSI megadeal, is a spare part quietly shipped off to China, his compatriot poses the biggest threat to Chelsea. PSG have taken their own advice and dreamt bigger.

Coping with a new status and expectation is PSG’s biggest task over these next two matches as they seek to realise these ambitions. Proving how much better than Chelsea they’ve become in the past year must only be the start.