Paris Saint-Germain edged out Real Madrid with Kylian Mbappe’s last-minute winner in the Champions League Round of 16 first leg but Lionel Messi ’s frustrations went on.
Messi has netted just two goals across 16 games in domestic competitions for Mauricio Pochettino’s side this campaign and his struggles to find top form continued against his old foes.
The Argentine has failed to find his top form since his high-profile summer transfer from Barcelona this summer and he saw his penalty saved by Thibaut Courtois at the Parc des Princes.
The match carried on Messi’s trend of struggling against Real Madrid, whom he has now played against on 46 occasions – with this his first outing against them in a PSG shirt.
Messi has an incredible 26 goals and 14 assists against the Spanish giants, but he has now gone eight games against the side without either scoring a goal or providing an assist – a run stretching back to May 2018.
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It is not just against Real Madrid as a club which Messi has struggled with in recent seasons, but more specifically Courtois.
The Belgian international has grown into one of the world’s best goalkeepers since joining Madrid from Chelsea in the summer of 2018.
Messi may have scored nine goals in 17 matches against Courtois – better than a rate of a goal every other game, which is a strong record, although significantly lower than the Argentine’s record against most other shot-stoppers.
However, all of those nine goals came when Courtois was either goalkeeper as Atletico Madrid or Chelsea, but the Belgian shot-stopper has now kept clean sheets in all five games against Messi when he has been Real Madrid goalkeeper.
Indeed, Courtois has now saved all seven shots he has faced from Messi – including Tuesday night’s penalty. And the Belgian has spotted a trend when it comes to the Argentinian missing spot-kicks.
"Obviously he shoots a lot of penalties, so it's hard to guess right," Courtois told BT Sport. "He missed a few on this side, so I think it was obvious he was going to the left. Maybe to the middle, he scored one against Leipzig. I just said 'okay, we'll go left', and I had a good save."
He added: "We started well enough but we perhaps weren't calm enough on the ball and suffered because of that, not countering well enough.
"We lost a stupid ball, Kylian Mbappe skips by two and manages to get the ball under me. It's tough to take but we didn't play well.
"Our gameplan doesn't change all that much being one down – we need to win to go through. Hopefully, with the fans behind us, we'll do just that.
"In these kind of games you know, as a goalkeeper, you're going to have quite a bit to do. I'd studied Lionel Messi's penalties a lot and I tried to play with him when I was on the line. You've also got to have that little bit of luck, too."
Courtois was eventually beaten in the closing seconds of Tuesday’s game by Kylian Mbappe as PSG take a narrow lead into next month’s second leg in the Spanish capital.
Messi will have another chance to beat his nemesis and help seal PSG’s progress into the quarter finals.
