And a very merry Christmas to you too, Luis Enrique. It was looking pretty hairy there for a while, as his Paris Saint-Germain side teetered on the brink of a group-stage humbling in the only competition that has ever really seemed to matter to them. Borussia Dortmund were ahead and so were Newcastle, and for all their vigour and enterprise the champions of France were doing their level best to push their coach towards the one door of the Paris Advent calendar you really do not want to open.
But just as the cracker jokes were beginning to write themselves, Paris were saved from a ghost of their past by a ghost of their present, and a ghost of their future. Kylian Mbappé created the equalising goal for the electrifying 17-year-old midfielder Warren Zaïre-Emery and, even if Milan’s late goal on Tyneside gave the closing minutes an unbearable jeopardy, Luis Enrique’s team progressed by virtue of their head‑to‑head record.
