There were very nice people this Thursday evening on the floor of the sports center, Palau Blaugrana, in Barcelona.
Distributed in both teams, there was practically the 7 major of the France team returned loaded with gold from its Japanese campaign.
There were 4 Olympic champions on the Barça side: Timothey N'Guessan, Dika Mem, Ludovic Fabregas and Melvyn Richardson;
and five on the Parisian side: Nikola and Luka Karabatic, Nedim Remili, Vincent Gérard and Yann Genty.
Nikola Karabatic took advantage of this evening to score the 1,100th goal of his Champions League career.
Even if this shock was only a group match on the long road which leads to the Final Four of this Champions League scheduled for June in Cologne, this poster for the 5th day of the tournament was therefore quite a dream poster. .
On the left, FC Barcelona, the reigning European champion.
On the right, PSG, eight-time champion of France and which, with all its stars, is still chasing the European trophy.
30 ': Here we go again!
(13-13) #BARPSG pic.twitter.com/PuHmvqNxQs
- PSG Handball (@psghand) October 21, 2021
While waiting to meet again later, perhaps as far as possible in the final, Barcelona took a psychological advantage over their French rivals by winning in their hall.
Without competition in Spain, Barça still hurt Parisian morale.
In 8 confrontations in recent years, Paris has only succeeded in winning once against its Catalan pet peeve.
It was in Coubertin and already in November 2016.
Dika Mem hurt Parisians
This Thursday night, Barcelona extended their lead to 7-1 by winning again. Not in the shape of their lives, the Parisians have not stopped chasing the score. Never very far because Barcelona failed to make a decisive hole. At the break, the two teams were also tied 13-13. But in the second half, especially in its second part, a boy came out of his box: the French Olympic champion Dika Mem who wreaked havoc in the Parisian defense. He hasn't missed anything in his last shoots. He forgot the time of an evening that he had friends opposite, companions of a crazy Japanese epic.
In front of him, Paris took out all its panoply but Barcelona have something that does not succeed at PSG.
Once again, the fate of the giants of world sport turns to the advantage of Barça in the land of the little sticky ball.
Barcelona win 30-27.
In the standings after 5 day, the situation of PSG is not good.
Paris is "only" fourth.
But nothing serious: the qualification for the final phase is not called into question or even in danger.
In a group of 8 very tough teams, the first two will qualify directly for the quarter-finals, the next two will go through the 8th finals.
Paris will go without worry.
But Paris will have to rebuild its health very quickly during the road trip that awaits it in the coming days: in Montpellier on Sunday in the Starligue then in Kielce in Poland in a week and Aix to finish.