Tright here was as soon as a dream that was Paris. It lasted for simply over an hour. At which level, enter the previous world – and enter Karim Benzema, who had the evening of his storied footballing life on this Champions League last-16 second leg.
Underneath the lights of the Bernabéu Paris Saint-Germain produced one of many extra extraordinary collapses of elite soccer’s trendy historical past, a collapse made all of the extra abject by the divine properly of expertise on this Paris workforce, the gerrymandering certainties of Messi-dom, of that divine entrance three, purchased to safe the crown of European membership soccer on this, our 12 months of Qatar 2022.
And soccer could be purchased. The fantastic historical past of Actual Madrid is testomony to that. And but, in some way, additionally, it may’t. This was, with all due apologies to the supporters of PSG in its personal twisted means an oddly life-affirming humiliation.
For 61 minutes Madrid had been stretched in each route, tortured on the left flank by the brilliance of Kylian Mbappé. Madrid seemed drained. They seemed harried and flat. These white shirts have an important sense of self: sometimes crushed, however by no means out-flashed or out-glitzed, remaining at all times their very own chilly clear crisp sq. of sunshine. However this felt like one thing else, a shifting of the hound beneath these regal toes.
At which level one thing unusual occurred, a kind of uncommon moments the place time and area appear to stretch in bizarre instructions.
What does £350m of attacking expertise get you? To not point out limitless nation-state funds and the best membership footballer of all time. Brittleness. Operatic collapse. A way as Madrid pressed laborious, of one thing shiny, callow and frail.
Quick ahead from 61 to 78 minutes and the birds above the Bernabéu had been already flying backwards by way of the sky, as Benzema accomplished a 17-minute hat-trick with probably the most impudent of touches.
The objective to make it 3-2 on combination got here straight from kick-off with the scores solely simply levelled on the evening. A single ahead move brought about panic in that hilarious, high-kicking farce of a Parisian defence. Benzema nipped in entrance of his man to nudge the ball into the web with the type of contact you would possibly reel off in a sport of lunchtime hall soccer, turning away and bellowing again on the stands with one thing that felt as very like rage as pleasure or disbelief.
There was time for PSG to lose their cool, for some hacks and kicks and lunges. However they had been achieved by that stage: completed, toasted, flambéed. And if it was unavoidably comical, there was additionally one thing grotesque within the spectacle of collapse.
For an hour this supernaturally proficient workforce, gassed and juiced and pumped up past the boundaries of its home league, had romped across the Bernabéu like princelings.
It was at all times unattainable to not see one thing of previous and new on this match-up, of ambition versus inheritance. And it appeared with 39 minutes gone that this tie was lifeless, that an unanswerable drive was being utilized.
A number of the Madrid followers had cheered Mbappé when his title was introduced. Sure, we recognise you. That is us. And he was a residing nightmare for Actual’s left aspect for lengthy intervals. This was ache, struggling, concern, a way of pre-humiliation each time he went veering on to the ball. How do you mark that which can’t be marked? Mbappé was a ghost.
And 6 minutes earlier than half-time he was on the market as soon as once more in his personal enormous lime inexperienced area, freed by a single move from Neymar. The end was stunning, a feint adopted by a ping laborious and low into the nook. That is one thing to be treasured. Mbappé is 23 now, but additionally six years into his elite profession. The pure velocity and stability, the hard-honed super-shredded physique are at their peak. Plus each a part of the craft is nailed, matured, fine-tuned, to the extent he can improvise and create, blow bubbles, a footballer reaching out into the far comers of his personal supreme expertise.
It appeared for many of this sport that may be the story, an exciting footballer taking one other vital step. Besides, it wasn’t. Thanks, Paris. As a result of, frankly, this was a present. Who noticed it coming? In all probability solely Benzema, who simply saved coming, urgent his shoulder to the wheel and producing two neat finishes to show the sport earlier than that closing second of fantasy.
Benzema has 30 targets in all now this season. He stays such an entire, brilliantly sensible ahead. However Madrid will certainly signal Mbappé in the summertime no matter occurs from right here. They’re a billion {dollars} in debt. What’s one other 150 million? That is the model, the long run earnings, the unusual white soul of this membership.
It was an excessive amount of for Paris right here, who gave us first brilliance, then lastly that sense of one thing fragile; a brittleness that was each painful, and in addition oddly bracing by the tip.
