When he took over as president of the club in 2011, Nasser Al Khelaïfi gave PSG five years for “to be part of the top European level and to win the Champions League“. The deadline has been passed and each season the same question comes up. Is Paris finally cut to lift the cup with big ears? The wait is even greater since the club of the capital broke the cursed ceiling of the quarter-finals by reaching the final in 2020, especially since it is the only one to have taken place in the last four of the last two editions.
With the arrival of Lionel Messi, crowned best player in the world for the 7th time this year by the Ballon d’Or jury, the club’s motto “Let’s dream bigger” seemed to take on its full meaning at the start of the 2021/22 season. . But Paris Saint-Germain was rather disappointed in its start to the European campaign in its performances on the meadow.
He was jostled in Bruges (1-1), benefited from maximum efficiency against Manchester City (2-0) and his victory was miraculous against Leipzig (3-2). The last two outings (the 2-2 draw in Leipzig and the 1-2 defeat in Manchester) have given the impression of a fair turnaround. Is the concern justified around the club in the capital? The numbers tend to say yes.
But where did this ultra-domineering team go in the group stage, the type to stick roustes to Celtic, Anderlecht, Malmö and others? Paris may well not have suffered a defeat against smaller than itself and have validated its qualification in advance, the fact remains that it has never donned the costume of a European cador. The capital club simply failed to dominate any of its first five meetings in C1.
It is even the opposite, he was afraid by undergoing each time more shots than he attempted against his opponent. Worse still, he suffers on average twice as much (8.2 attempted per match against 17 suffered). Paris is no longer in control and also experiences great difficulty in keeping control of a match. In 2021/22, 7 points were dropped after leading in the score, only Atalanta (9) and Leipzig (8) did worse among the 32 teams who started this C1 campaign.
It must be said that the context is not favorable to the solidification of benchmarks. The frequent unavailability of executives, and even more of stakeholders of the game like Marco Verratti and Neymar, does not help Mauricio Pochettino to create a lasting recipe. The Argentinian technician has never aligned two identical eleven in 57 games, making 4.8 changes between two team compositions on average since his arrival (i.e. a 44% upheaval of his eleven between each match).
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The year 2021 is that of a great reversal for Paris Saint-Germain, of a 180-degree turn. Cataloged as an intractable team against the weak but unable to beat the big ones, even more in the knockout phase, the Parisian club has become under the leadership of Pochettino the exact opposite of what it was. In the closet, bad luck and the mastery of small games, welcome to success and prestigious scalps.
After the elimination of Bayern Munich and FC Barcelona in the previous campaign, Paris offered Manchester City at home at the end of September (2-0), its best victory of the season, but obtained against the course of the game. Idrissa Gueye and Lionel Messi scored 2 goals for 6 Parisian shots in total when the Citizens remained silent despite 18 attempts. Far from being an isolated case.
Ultra-realistic, PSG is quite simply the club with the highest percentage of shots converted into a goal in the Champions League this season (22%). And this does not translate only on the offensive level. Paris is also the team with the highest defensive success. According to the Expected Goals (a statistic which predicts the number of goals normally conceded or scored according to the quality of the shots), the capital club should have conceded 3.8 more goals (10.8 xG suffered, 7 goals conceded), the most favorable differential of the 32 teams in C1 2021/22.
To better understand the Parisian dynamic, a comparison with previous campaigns offers another revealing. In almost all general statistical categories, the PSG 2021/22 appears below its average in C1 since the arrival of Qatari investors in 2011. As these radars show below (which you can combine), it scores less, shoot less, keep the ball less, keep a clean sheet less often and collect fewer points than usual.
Each statistical category of the above radar is indexed to a value from 1 to 100, the maximum of which represents the maximum performance achieved by a team. For example, the 16 points collected by Paris in 2017/18, which are its best performance under QSI, represent 89% of the maximum score reached (18 by Bayern in 2019/20 and Real in 2014/15), hence the 89 in the blue graph.
The figures for the 2021/22 edition are obviously not definitive because only 5 of the 6 matches of the group stage have been played. All numbers on the green radar have been adjusted with a coefficient of proportionality. They should experience slight variations on Tuesday night, but even if they win against Brugge, the capital club will, at best, be able to match their lowest total under QSI in the group stage (11 points in 2018/19) .
According to Mauricio Pochettino, there is no fire in the lake. At a press conference on Monday, the Argentinian technician said to himself “calm“, despite the “storm“of rumors blowing about his club and the eternal questions about his game project:”I feel good because we know the process in which we are involved. I can feel the support of my players. Can we play better? Yes. Can we improve some aspects? Yes. We are on schedule, we are winning, we are first in L1 with an 11 point lead, second in C1 but qualified in a very difficult group, against a team like Manchester City which has been working for five or six years.“