Au Revoir, Aston Villa. But if there was a way to leave the Champions League, it was. An epic, extraordinary effort was in vain and yet brave and beautiful. They will not join the 1982 class to taste European glory, but there was a doomed glory to this. They beat the team Unai Emery, declared the favorites to win the Champions League that night. They threatened a return to have the Remontada Luis Enrique’s Barcelona compete to beat Emery’s Paris Saint-Germain in 2017. Two goals behind the evening, 5-1 on the total, scored Villa three times.
Like Bayern Munich before them, Paris Saint-Germain was beaten in Birmingham. But if it was only more than 90 minutes, there could be a legacy if the factory villa highlighted could be exposed by Arsenal or Real Madrid in the semi -final. They adopted PSG’s running machines and rattled them with their relentlessness. A team with 17 wins in their previous 18 games landed, relieved that there were only three minutes of injury time.
For Villa, a first European cup run ended in 42 years too soon. They recorded the injury time goal Nuno Mendes in Paris and the reflexes of the outstanding Gianluigi Donnarumma showed at Villa Park, but he cherished memories of a special evening. “We can feel happy, we can feel proud,” says Emery. “In our process, tonight was the highest level we achieved.”
There was Marcus Rashford, who played like a man, his revival accelerated when he tore in PSG. There was John McGinn, who was a fight back in idiosyncratic way. There was your tielemans, his tremendous season decorated with their first purpose. There was Ezri Konsa, who dropped in his lap to put Villa 3-2, which gave them half an hour to achieve the goal that would earn extra time.
It eluded them. Indeed, the closest they came was by courtesy of the man who borrowed them from the French capital. PSG has won some tragicomic ways to go out of the Champions League over the past decade. If it was driven by a goal of Marco Asensio, a player they own, it would have been one of the most gal. But Donnarumma saved his lap. The hero of Anfield was PSG’s rescuer at Villa Park, and again eliminated an English club.
It took a combination of an inspired goalkeeper and fly aid to finish Villa. PSG’s goals in the first half hour showed that they were kings of the break. For Achraf Hakimi and Nuno Mendes, Counter-Attack was perhaps the best form of defense.
It illustrates the buccaneering -gloss of this PSG team. It is not in their nature to sit on a scoreboard. Rather than defending a 3-1 lead, their fullback ran into their own half to score. The opener may have had a particular popularity on the other side of the English Channel.
Emi Martinez, the Bete Noire of the French public, was punishable on a day when his Bravado returned. PSG scored with the last attack of the match in Paris and their first comment in Birmingham. Luis Enrique brought back Bradley Barcola and was confirmed when the wing left to cross, Martinez followed it out of Ousmane Dembele’s reach and Hakimi, who ran 80 meters from his own back four.
What one fullback could do could mimic another. Mendes hit the first leg. He also recorded in the second point and bent in a shot from the edge of the box, found by Dembele after a lightning that PSG carries the length of the pitch.
So far, Tres has bien for PSG. “At 2-0 we almost had Villa on the canvas,” Luis Enrique said. They did not make the knockout to an excellent start. His team combined rain, wind and cold, with baldly Parisian supporters bouncing in bad conditions. This contributed to a wonderful atmosphere. Villa Park was rarely harder. They made up the volume for ‘Hi Ho Aston Villa’. If PSG was not intimidated by Jeff Beck’s sound, John McGinn’s face caused more concerns.
The captain led the reaction. So did Tielemans. He was grieved to deny a penalty a minute before, and he completed a fine move that involved McGinn and Rashford, although helped by a narrative of Pacho.
It wasn’t the last one. The defender completed an unwanted double, while McGinn’s shot of him and Donnarumma came up. A second goal in three minutes followed, and Rashford pitched the Bylline to choose Konsa.
It comes in the midst of a fearless, fierce beginning of the second half of Villa. Donnarumma, who denied Pau Torres before the break, had to distinguish himself. Donnarumma, which has McGinn’s goal, made very different, but tremendous savings of Rashford. The hero of Anfield struck a head of Tielemans. He denied Asensio. “Sensational,” says Luis Enrique.
But if the goalkeeper shows resistance, PSG showed vulnerabilities. Here, Villa tried to attack after the attack, and gathered 17 shots, and Emery dropped in the Heistrionics on the tangent, as the fourth goal would not come. “I didn’t think we would be knocked out at any moment,” says Luis Enrique. But an admission followed. “I don’t think this team was so dominated by another team in this way.”
Nevertheless, Villa became only the fifth team that beat PSG this season. But like the fourth, Liverpool, they still went out over two legs. But PSG eventually celebrated a defeat and survived the thriller at Villa and stumbled over where they looked to rise.
