Paris Saint-Germain
Wednesday night saw Barcelona do the impossible and become the first club in Champions League history to overturn a 4-0 deficit to eliminate PSG by winning 6-1. While it is easily the greatest comeback in football history, it shows a great concern for PSG who managed to squander not only a 4-0 first leg win but also the advantage of having an away goal advantage by conceding three goals in the final seven minutes of the game.
The result is humiliating for PSG and it’s a gigantic failure on their part to not have qualified into the quarter-finals and while there can be arguments over the referee’s decision to award Luis Suarez a penalty towards the end of the game was justified or if Suarez dived, PSG never should have found themselves in that position to begin with.
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The PSG board have made no secret about their ambitions to win the Champions League and sacked Laurent Blanc last year after his continued failure to progress past the quarter-finals of the competition each season and hired Unai Emery due to his fantastic work at Sevilla which seen him win three Europa Leagues in a row but failure on this level will not be accepted by PSG and with them three points behind Monaco in Ligue 1 despite having a team filled with world-class players and having spent millions on players with huge wages will be seen as nothing short of failure.
The biggest criticism that can be given to the PSG players on Wednesday night is that the players clearly looked frightened of Barcelona and there was no clear leader on the pitch, Sanchez may not be a future captain for PSG but his winning mentality would be a massive benefit to this team that clearly needs it. PSG would love to have a player like Alexis Sanchez in their team and a front line consisting of Edinson Cavani, Angel di Maria and Alexis Sanchez with Marco Verratti behind them is truly frightening.
PSG most certainly can afford the wages that Sanchez would demand and would be willing to pay him it if they felt that the player was serious about moving to France. There were reports earlier in the week that PSG felt confident about being able to sign Alexis and after an embarrassing elimination to Barcelona in mid-week, the French club will certainly be looking at him to improve their squad next season to make an improvement in the Champions League.