PSG poured a mountain of money to realize the Champions League dream. However, after the defeat to Manchester United, they retreated back to being the “king of the blind” in Ligue 1 – the tournament where they were 17 points away from the second ranked team even though they had only gone through 27 rounds.
Rashford’s successful penalty in the 90 + 2 minute helped Manchester United come back spectacularly against PSG to win the right to play in the quarter-finals of the Champions League. Once again, the threshold of heaven closed in front of PSG, the rich French football team. Last season, they also stopped in the eighth round of Europe’s highest league after a 2-5 defeat to Real Madrid.
Marcus Rashford has come to comfort his junior Kylian Mbappe. At first glance, it just looks like a fair-play act by the winner. But when thinking about the investments that PSG have spent over a long period of time, one has to ask the question: “What’s so much money for?”.
Why is that? It should be remembered, Marcus Rashford – who ended the fate of PSG is a product of the Manchester United youth academy. And Kylian Mbappe, although only 20 years old, has spent 180 million euros from the leadership of the Parc de Prince Stadium team to raise the dream of winning the Champions League.
The total value of PSG’s squad in the 1-3 loss to MU is 496 million euros (according to Transfermarkt). This figure for the Red Devils is 400 million euros. The difference of 96 million euros shows the difference between the two clubs. That’s not to mention in the PSG squad many undervalued players like Buffon or Dani Alves due to age and short contract term.
From 2011 until now, PSG has spent 1.17 billion USD to buy players. Contrary to that huge number, not once have they made it past the quarter-finals of the Champions League.
In addition to the absence of Neymar, PSG seems to have the strongest squad in hand and holds a huge advantage with 2 goals away. Confronting them is just a Manchester United shattered by injury and must use young players less than 20 years old. However, in a day PSG’s expensive stars squandered their chances, they had to pay the price by being eliminated from the Champions League.
Just a comforting pat on the head but it speaks volumes about PSG’s problems. Perhaps, they spent that much money in exchange for a few domestic championships, where PSG are 17 points behind the second-ranked team despite playing one game less.
Manchester United are flourishing under Solskjaer. They won a total of 14 victories in 17 matches with the Norwegian strategist. The victory over PSG also made the Red Devils the first team in Champions League history to come back successfully in the knockout round after losing 2 goals (or more) at home in the first leg.
