- Bayer’s out of its depth at this level of the tournament
- Paris Saint-Germain deserves credit for seizing the opportunity
- Zlatan on fire, part of everything
We’ve been harping on it over the last 48 hours, but there’s no way to understand the significance of this result without looking back on Bayer’s flops throughout the course of the tournament. Against a Manchester United team that’s proven to be a shadow of their former selves, Bayer lost 4-2 and 5-0 in group stage. Today, at home, with month to figure out how to stay in this tie, they went down in the third minute en route to a four-goal loss. When teams like Juventus, Napoli, Porto and Basel are in the Europa League while Bayer’s in the final 16, you see how fortunate Sami Hyypia’s team was to be drawn into an easy group.
[MORE: UEFA Champions League: Ibrahimovic brace helps PSG cruise 4-0 at Bayer Leverkusen]
Leverkusen was weak, but that doesn’t mean PSG shouldn’t get some credit for their performance. On the contrary, we often see teams sleepwalk through games like this, lulled into a sense of security that keeps them from putting up a dominant result. Had the Parisians sat on Blaise Matuidi’s early opener, using their dominance of possession to bleed out the game’s next 87 minutes, they would have to start a full team in Paris to fully kill off the tie. Instead, up four goals, Laurent Blanc will be able to use his prodigious depth to rotate his squad, something that could prove valuable as league, cup, and European games pile up.
[MORE: FC Barcelona seizes control of Champions League series with 2-0 win over Manchester City]
Ibrahimovic’s second goal was nasty. We use the term unstoppable a lot, but that was one of the more apt goals for that description – a shot that may have been ever more powerful than his gasp-inducing goal earlier in the tournament against Anderlecht. A soccer ball is never going to be truly unstoppable, but that hasn’t stopped Ibrahimovic from trying.
That goal is the headline. The body of Tuesday’s story: Ibrahimovic was a part of everything PSG did. On the first goal, he played the ball in from the right to Marco Verratti ahead of Blaise Matuidi’s opener. He doubled his team’s lead with a hard hit penalty in the 39th, while his work along the left flank contributed to the buildup for PSG’s final goal. In the lead up to that final salvo, he had dropped back into midfield to help control play as the Parisians passed their way through the match’s final half hour. He is the star, leader, danger man and focal point – the main reason PSG are becoming one of Europe’s elites.
UEFA put a stat out before today’s match: In his last 27 games for club and country, Ibrahimovic had scored 33 goals. Today in Germany, he improved on that ratio. The man is one of the four or five best players on the planet, and if he keeps putting up performances like these, PSG has a chance to beat anybody.
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