It's an incredible story, already in the legend of the Champions League. PSG are in the semifinals of the premier event, having reversed the score in three minutes. It was Choupo-Moting, the striker we like to make fun of, who scored the second goal, in extra time of a crazy, crazy, crazy match.
It is one of the craziest returns of recent years, like the Champions League which for seasons has offered incredible matches, a degree of adrenaline at its climax. Ajax returned like a pancake by Tottenham and Lucas, Liverpool who destroys Barcelona after losing largely in the first leg.
This time it's on a match, as if it was a final. After the epic of Dortmund defeated in the camera of a Parc des Princes in front of which had gathered 4000 supporters, Paris continues its completely new Champions League with crazy feelings: Tuchel's team does not necessarily play very well but she is propelled by an intimate force, an astonishing spirit of conquest.
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⚽️⚽️⚽️ # ATAPSG pic.twitter.com/pMwKjhbiKF
As if the club refused to disappear when the guillotine approached, as if it still had a trick up its sleeve. Before, Paris went out miserably. Now, he has heroes and they have a funny face, like the improbable Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting, caught by the sleeve of the Covid-19. At the end of the contract, he shouldn't have been there.
He is able to prevent his friends from scoring against Strasbourg in Ligue 1 but qualifies his team in the last four of the C1. It's football, it's incredible and this game remains eternally apart, the most astonishing of team sports where life - and therefore the refusal of death - changes in 180 seconds.
World champion of separate teams
The entry of Kylian Mbappé, in the 60th, changed everything, after a dismal first period when Parisians seemed the only tourists in Lisbon. Faced with a good team but not a great team, the Parisians were lucky - despite the bad luck of losing their goalkeeper, Keylor Navas, to injury - the patience and the talent to believe in it, to resist, to continue , boosted by the arrival of the world champion on the lawn of the Luz stadium.
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It's worthy of Manchester United of 1999 against Bayern Munich in Barcelona in the Champions League final. Peter Schmeichel was in goal at the time. He was in the press gallery this Wednesday evening. There's no hazard.
PSG returns to the semi-finals stage, an exploration in unknown territory for him. He has not been to this altitude since 1995 with Luis Fernandez at the helm, Weah, Ginola and Rai on the meadow. In the semifinals, against Atlético de Madrid or RB Leipzig, Paris will recover a Mbappé even more in legs and Angel Di Maria, back from suspension. Perhaps he can cross his fingers for Marco Verratti even if that seems fair.
Above all, Navas should be on his feet even if, at 50, PSG remains a facetious club, capable of anything, faithful to its legend. It is not known if he will be European champion on August 23, but he is the world champion of the teams apart.