In One Moment, Messi And PSG Make It All Work

In One Moment, Messi and PSG Make It All Work

- Rory Smith

Paris: Lionel Messi picked the ball up in that spot, the one that has served as the starting point for so many of his finest moments, the one that he knows so well that it might as well be his spot. It has, for 15 years, been his base camp: a few yards inside from the right touchline, a few yards from halfway.

He was standing still as he controlled it. He had been standing still for some time, by that stage. Paris Saint-Germain had taken an early lead, through Idrissa Gueye, and had spent most of the rest of the game desperately trying to fend off Manchester City’s unrelenting attacks.

They had maintained their advantage a little through judgment — the industry of Gueye and Ander Herrera, the obduracy of Marquinhos, the sheer size and improbable elasticity of Gianluigi Donnarumma — and a little through luck.

It is a tenet of modern soccer that the host’s luck could not last. Then Messi got the ball. He was at full speed but there was no sense of haste; it was as if he was waiting for all of the other moving parts of the scene to be just so before he played his hand. He saw Achraf Hakimi bursting down the right. He saw Mbappe burst across the box at an angle. He waited.