Not even signing Lionel Messi has saved a self-destructive club with a pathological inability to rise to the occasion
By Adam White for Get French Football News
“All hands abandon ship!” yelled Captain Jean-Luc Picard moments before the USS Enterprise exploded for the umpteenth time. In the classic Star Trek episode Cause and Effect, the Enterprise had become stuck in a time loop. Picard’s crew were repeating the same day, and making the same mistakes, leading to the Enterprise’s destruction over and over again. A similar feeling of deja vu will now be engulfing the Paris Saint-Germain players and staff after another Champions League capitulation, this time against Real Madrid. Picard’s crew slowly learned from their mistakes and saved themselves, but PSG show no signs of doing the same.
Despite the drama of Karim Benzema’s 16-minute hat-trick at the Santiago Bernabéu, which overturned PSG’s two-goal aggregate lead and dumped the club out of the Champions League, a sense of inevitability soon arrived. For PSG, all this had happened before. A string of recent Champions League exits – most notably to Manchester United, Manchester City and Barcelona – carried the same markers. Another winnable tie was under control before PSG froze under pressure and slipped into turmoil.
Continue reading…Not even signing Lionel Messi has saved a self-destructive club with a pathological inability to rise to the occasionBy Adam White for Get French Football News“All hands abandon ship!” yelled Captain Jean-Luc Picard moments before the USS Enterprise exploded for the umpteenth time. In the classic Star Trek episode Cause and Effect, the Enterprise had become stuck in a time loop. Picard’s crew were repeating the same day, and making the same mistakes, leading to the Enterprise’s destruction over and over again. A similar feeling of deja vu will now be engulfing the Paris Saint-Germain players and staff after another Champions League capitulation, this time against Real Madrid. Picard’s crew slowly learned from their mistakes and saved themselves, but PSG show no signs of doing the same.Despite the drama of Karim Benzema’s 16-minute hat-trick at the Santiago Bernabéu, which overturned PSG’s two-goal aggregate lead and dumped the club out of the Champions League, a sense of inevitability soon arrived. For PSG, all this had happened before. A string of recent Champions League exits – most notably to Manchester United, Manchester City and Barcelona – carried the same markers. Another winnable tie was under control before PSG froze under pressure and slipped into turmoil. Continue reading…