Kylian Mbappé may be leaving the French capital, but as long as he remains in Paris Saint-Germain's starting eleven, they will continue to be a dangerous team.
The World Cup winner showed why on Tuesday, when he scored a pair of excellent goals in a 2-1 victory over Real Sociedad that returned PSG to the Champions League quarter-finals for the first time in three seasons.
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“Right away we knew we couldn't sleep,” Mbappé said after the game. “If they had opened the scoring, they would have gone ahead with the support of their fans. We had to extinguish their hopes from the beginning.
“That's what we did and we're very happy to be back in the quarterfinals.”
PSG advanced 4-1 on aggregate, and Mbappé also scored one of the goals in the 2-0 first-leg victory in Paris three weeks ago. ESPN has reported that Mbappé has already told PSG that he will not stay at the club after this season, and that his move to Real Madrid seems almost certain.
Despite the enormous expenditure to try to win the Champions League for the first time, PSG had been eliminated from the round of 16 five times in the last seven seasons, including the last two. They reached the semi-finals in 2021 and were runners-up in 2020.
“We wanted to qualify, but we also wanted to win,” Mbappé said. “We had a clear game plan and managed to score early. We didn't have too much pressure, just a little at the end.”
Despite his heroics against Sociedad, Mbappé had not scored in his last two appearances, a pair of draws with Rennes and AS Monaco, and was substituted in both games, a move by Luis Enrique that, according to ESPN sources, did not it felt good. good with his star player.
But Mbappé played until the final whistle on Tuesday and after the match he reiterated that there were no problems between the PSG coach and himself.
“There is no problem with him, even if people think there is,” Mbappé said. “I have problems, but the coach is not one of them.”
Luis Enrique put it even more succinctly: “I don't have any problem with any player.”
“He can score 50 goals and give 25 assists with any coach,” added the PSG coach. “For me he is the best player in the world in the final third, unstoppable. Today he also showed that he can hold the ball when the game situation requires it and then attack in the open field.”
With his two goals against Sociedad, Mbappé became the second youngest player to reach 45 goals in the Champions League in the group stage and in the playoffs, at 25 years and 76 days old. Lionel Messi reached that mark at 24 years and 257 days, and Mbappé now stands at 46 goals.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this article.
