Parisians know their European programme! PSG will face Italians Juventus Turin, Portuguese Benfica Lisbon and Israelis Maccabi Haifa in the Champions League. The draw took place this Thursday, August 25 in Istanbul, Turkey, the city in which the final will be played on June 10, 2023.
The team-mates of Neymar and Mbappé, authors of a very good start to the season, in particular avoid Liverpool and Barcelona and find themselves in a group, on paper, within their reach. Benfica and Maccabi, for example, had to go through the play-offs to reach this group stage and Juventus finished 4th in the Italian championship in recent seasons after a nine-year reign and as many league titles.
“When you know the ambitions of the club, the means made available to the staff and the players, it would be a disappointment not to finish at the top of the group.“, believes Nadia Benmokhtar former player of Juvisy and responsible for the development of the “PSG” brand at the club, “this team has all the cards in hand to succeed. I do not see in this group a team capable of beating PSG in a two-way confrontation.“
At the end of the draw, the president of PSG Nasser Al-Khelaïfi reaffirmed the ambition of the Parisian club : “It is the most beautiful competition in the world. We are ready. We want to go as far as possible. We train every day to achieve this. Our new sports staff are doing a great job. Thanks to everyone’s commitment and also thanks to the support of our fans, we are having a very good start to the season. We are on a performance dynamic that will help us to approach our European meetings with great confidence”.
Juventus Turin remains a club that PSG has never beaten in its history. The fans still remember a terrible 6 goals to 1 inflicted on the Parc des Princes in the European Super Cup in January 1997. This 2022-2023 season will perhaps mark the revenge of the Parisians on the Turinese.