PSG: Angel Di Maria, a remarkable but not dazzling passage

His trace remains considerable and his passage a success.

When a seven-year term leads to the title of best passer in the history of PSG, a few trophies gleaned here or there with five championships and as many French Cups, the notion of failure is excluded, that which will stick for example to Mauro Icardi's balance sheet when he packs his bags.

His caviars, often addressed from the outside of the foot, his lobs stung in front of the goalkeepers, his tense cannon shots, a few memorable free kicks, his passage without history or major controversies, leave a mark in the life of the club.

Angel Di Maria is playing his 295th and last meeting with the Rouge et Bleu this Saturday against Metz, with 92 goals scored and 113 assists.

He will also have played in a Champions League final, in 2020, when the Final 8 edition was completed in Lisbon, lost against Bayern (1-0).

Lisbon where he took his first European steps in 2007 before winning the Champions League in 2014 with Real Madrid, the famous decima.

🙌❤️💙

The @PSG_inside would like to salute 𝐀𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐥 𝐃𝐢 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚 and his 7 seasons spent in the Red and Blue jersey.

The Argentinian won 18 titles and became the club's all-time leading assist provider.

— Paris Saint-Germain (@PSG_inside) May 20, 2022

With his grip on the event that year, he landed a season later at PSG with the hope that he was the missing link to allow the team to move up to C1, the man who would increase the Edinson Cavani and Zlatan Ibrahimovic duo.

But the moult never worked.

This is how the taste for the unfinished also escorts this seven-year term in the capital.

Let's forget the last season when he had to make room after the arrival of Leo Messi, also blocked by the presence of Neymar and Kylian Mbappé.

Before, he did not always give the feeling of being that extra that would have changed the life of PSG.

He even sometimes damaged himself with this expulsion in the semi-final return of the Champions League 2021 by deliberately stepping on Fernandinho against Manchester City.

Result: three suspension games, after the four at the start of that season for spitting on Alvaro during a clasico at the Parc des Princes.

Di Maria sometimes benefited from his relative anonymity to avoid the outburst that a Neymar would have suffered.

He will have weighed too little in the knockout games

Fideo will above all have been a great player in group matches in European competition, with master classes against Real Madrid or Naples, but will have weighed too little in the knockout games.

Socially erased, he will always have been the adjustment variable for Parisian coaches, disappearing behind Messi, therefore this season, as he had lost his place to Neymar in 2017 under Unai Emery who aligned an attack with the Brazilian surrounded by Kylian Mbappé and Edinson Cavani.

The club even considered selling him in 2017, only two years after his arrival from Manchester United, by offering him to Barcelona, ​​who had just lost… Neymar.

A sign that his Parisian life will never have coincided with the initial plan, his dreams of grandeur and the hope that the club's decision-makers had placed in him.

It will have enchanted, it is obvious, but in proportions which one would have imagined more brilliant.