Former Paris Saint-Germain boss Mauricio Pochettino has suggested his side’s Champions League collapse against Real Madrid last season was down to the players.
PSG were eliminated from the Champions League at the Round of 16 stage by eventual winners Real Madrid despite appearing to be in control of the tie. Goals in each leg from Kylian Mbappe had given Les Parisiens a two-goal aggregate lead before a 17-minute Karim Benzema hat-trick turned the game on its head.
Despite the French giants wrapping up the Ligue 1 crown in April, the former Tottenham Hotspur boss was booed by large sections of the home crowd with a perception that he was responsible for several below-par performances across the season. Christophe Galtier was appointed as his successor at the Parc des Princes this summer.
PSG’s humbling elimination in Europe was the club’s latest in a long-line of failures on the Champions League stage – a competition which has eluded them despite all their domestic success. It summed up a relatively forgettable campaign which also saw them crash out early in the Coupe de France with a humiliating defeat to Nice.
Pochettino received a large portion of the blame for the French club’s failure against Real Madrid, despite his side being the superior side for the vast majority of the tie – only for them to spectacularly lose their composure in a devasting spell in the last half-hour of the tie.
Speaking to Spanish TV station Movistar, Pochettino reflected on the encounter: “There are only so many things that me and the staff can influence about a game. The rest is up to the player.” It is a clear sign that Pochettino felt, in that match, that players stopped following instructions under the pressure of the situation.
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Pochettino was appointed as PSG boss in January 2021, replacing the dismissed Thomas Tuchel, and within two weeks had won the first trophy of his coaching career – guiding his side to the Trophee des Champions by defeating Marseille. Despite defeating Monaco in the Coupe de France final, PSG were surprisingly beaten to the Ligue 1 title by huge outsiders Lille.
The Argentine coach had mixed fortunes in the Champions League – securing impressive aggregate victories over Barcelona and Bayern Munich before falling to Manchester City at the semi-final stage.
However, a summer which saw Lionel Messi, Sergio Ramos, Gianluigi Donnarumma, Achraf Hakimi, Nuno Mendes and Georginio Wijnaldum heading the arrivals at the club raised expectations – and the club's Champions League Round of 16 collapse against Madrid was definitive in how their 2021/22 campaign would be assessed.
