Paris Saint-Germain came to the club World Cup as new crowned champions of Europe, but a meeting with the Inter Miami van Lionel Messi In the last 16 this Sunday brings back memories of unfortunate times for the French club.
PSG's stunning 5-0 demolition of Inter Milan in Munich at the end of last month so that they could win the UEFA Champions League for the first time, completed an incredible season for the side supported by Qatar under the coaching of Luis Enrique.
It is no coincidence that PSG has reached their crowning glory in their first season after their focus definitively shifting superstar players to allow a brilliant coach to work with a hungry, dynamic young team instead.
The relocation of Kylian Mbappe a year ago to Real Madrid followed the departure in 2023 by Neymar, the world's most expensive signature when he came in 2017, and Messi, was appointed Luis Enrique in the same summer.
When PSG bounced in August 2021 to sign Messi after a cash-stripped Barcelona could not keep him, the French side logically thought that the Argentinian could be the man to deliver elusive Champions League glory.
Messi, who was 34 at the time, thought the same.
“My dream is to win another Champions League and I think I'm in the ideal place to have that chance and to do it,” he said at his unveiling.
Unfortunately it did not work that way, either in Messi's first season in Paris, among compatriot Mauricio Pochettino in 2021/22, or in the next campaign under Christophe Galtier.
PSG had the Champions League final and then semi-final in the two seasons prior to the arrival of Messi, so he looked like the last part in the puzzle.
Instead, they went backwards with him in the side and went out of the European Elite Club competition in the last 16 two years in a row.
Win probability opta by Statspleform
Everything is not forgiven
Messi must fit – with his estimated annual salary of 30 million euros after tax – as well as Neymar and Mbappe may have increased the Star Appeal, but it weakened them as a team.
Towards the end, the Barcelona legend was even hunted by some sections of the PSG support that found Messi's dedication to the cause was not what it should have been.
Messi was a PSG player when he inspired Argentina in Qatar in Qatar at the end of 2022, but there were only flashes of his genius at club level in France.
His statistics correspond to each check, with 32 goals and 35 assists in 75 performances, and he won two Ligue 1 titles while raising the value of PSG as a brand.
But a memorable quote from a columnist in French Sports Daily L'Equipe summarized quite things.
“PSG has not been better than before because of him … And he seemed to have the same desire to play in Ligue 1 as he did to go to the dentist,” Vincent Duluc wrote.
Quick Vooruit Two years and Messi enjoys the dusk of his career in Major League Soccer at Inter Miami, the team he helped to qualify for the knockout phase of this club World Cup.
The fate has therefore thrown a last 16 confrontation with PSG on Sunday in Atlanta, in the same stadium where he scored a beautiful free kick to achieve a 2-1 victory over Porto last week.
“Everything is not forgiven,” said the front page of L'Equipe in France on Friday when it described the feelings of “failure and bitterness” that remains behind the Argentinian enchantment there.
Miami coach Javier Mascherano now believes that the unfortunate memory of his time in Paris can encourage Messi.
“It is clear that it is better for us if he plays angry because he is one of those players who, when he has something in his head, makes an extra effort,” Mascherano told ESPN.
With Luis Enrique and PSG with great ambitions of adding a world title to their European crown, even more bitterness would be felt if Messi – days after his 38th birthday – managed to eliminate them on Sunday.