Paris Saint-Germain lost 3-1 at Real Madrid in the UEFA Champions League on Wednesday and it didn’t take a long for fingers to be pointed by some of their players.
And, many will say, rightly so.
Adrien Rabiot, 22, had some pretty loaded comments after the clash at the Santiago Bernabeu as the young midfielder seemed to take a swipe at PSG’s star attackers Neymar, Kylian Mbappe and Edinson Cavani who had an off night in the UCL Round of 16 first leg.
“The problem is that it’s easy to score eight goals in Dijon, but these are the kinds of matches we need to be winning,” Rabiot said. “As usual, we had chances, although they weren’t quite clear. When you play against teams like this they have two or three chances and they end up going in.”
Rabiot, who scored PSG’s lone goal in Madrid to give the French champions a first half lead, has a point. He and Marco Verrati gave Les Parisiens a solid platform from which to attack Real Madrid but Neymar and Co. squandered chances and went missing.
In a tie which will likely decided the future of both managers, the loser surely to be out by the end of the season, if not sooner, PSG’s stars didn’t shine brightest.
Yes, as a team PSG played extremely well in the second half and created opportunities but Real Madrid struck twice late on to give themselves a two-goal advantage heading into the second leg in Paris in three weeks time.
Given the chances they created against Real and the brittle confidence of Zinedine Zidane’s side this season, PSG will still feel like they’re in this tie and in with a chance of reaching the last eight.
Rabiot’s blast was supposed to be a wake-up call for his teammates and he will hope it has the desired effect.
.NBC
