Geopolitics and Dan Burn can make for strange bedfellows but Saudi Arabia against Qatar was decided by the boy from Blyth and the lad from North Shields. Newcastle United and Paris Saint-Germain’s owners brought the Middle East to the northeast but, while there is a bigger picture and wider ambitions, United’s locals wrote their own credibility defying script on a seminal, spectacular night.
Burn outscored Kylian Mbappe, his fellow Geordie Sean Longstaff did what the rest of PSG’s star-studded forward line could not and found the net and Miguel Almiron and Fabian Schar completed arguably Newcastle’s greatest game for many a year. On another chastening, harrowing night for the serial disappointments from the French capital, Newcastle’s unlikely lads seized control of the Champions League’s supposed group of death.
