Mbappé and Barcola give PSG healthy lead against fading la Real

"Many would like to see us dead," Luis Enrique had announced, theatrically if not entirely incorrectly, after the narrowest squeak through the group stages in the autumn.

- Barney Ronay

Midway though this last 16 tie Paris Saint-Germain remain not just alive in the Champions League but strong favourites to register their first knockout victory in three years. They were driven on at the Parc des Princes by the edge of Kylian Mbappé and the energy of a reconfigured team that is, for all its anti-galactico stylings, geared ever more to feeding the ball towards its incumbent Sun King.

Real Sociedad came to Paris ready to play. They pressed fearlessly in a thrilling first half, but were picked off in an increasingly limb-weary second by the high-craft of the Paris attack, Mbappé and Bradley Barcola scoring the goals to make it 2-0 at the end of an agreeably open first leg.

For the opening half of this Champions League last 16 tie Real Sociedad and Paris Saint-Germain produced a game of beguiling contrasts. La Real pressed recklessly high, Paris reeled.

off a series of surgical breaks, the entire spectacle a thrilling game of contrasts. On the one hand an apparently fearless underdog in arguably the biggest game in its history; on the other the high-speed brilliance of Mbappé and Ousmane Dembélé, undercut as ever by the usual highwire Parisian neuroses at this stage of the competition.