A stranger scored with his own – Sport – Kommersant

In the first meeting of the main confrontation of the first round of the play-offs of the Champions League, between Bayern and PSG, the Munich club won away. The outcome of the match in the second half was decided by an accurate strike by Kingsley Coman, but PSG striker Kylian Mbappe was a bit unlucky. Two of his goals were ruled out for offsides, one of which was microscopic and half a foot.

Of the four Champions League round of 16 matches scheduled this week, PSG’s clash with Bayern is certainly the highlight. Moreover, perhaps, the confrontation between the French grandee and the German one in the very first round of the play-offs, albeit with some stretch, can be considered one of the options for an early final.

The debut of the game confirmed that PSG, which last week suffered two defeats in a row – to Marseille in the French Cup and to Monaco in the national championship – is not in the best condition. Already six minutes after the start of the game, the Park de Princes stands for the first, but by no means the last time burst into a deafening whistle, because at that moment the home team had not even created a hint of a meaningful attack. It soon became clear that Parisian head coach Christophe Galatier had opted for a classic counter-attacking tactic, whose success, in the absence of the injured and therefore left on the bench Kylian Mbappe, was to be based on a combination of individual skill and the subtle interaction of Lionel Messi with Neymar. However, by and large, the star South Americans did not succeed. True, in one of the episodes, the defenders of Bayern knocked down Neymar near someone else’s penalty area with a fairly accentuated movement of the elbow, but there was no punishment for this.

Munich, however, also did not please with a particularly sincere football. They seemed to be crushing the Parisians, but they did not create obvious sharpness near their gates. Only shortly before the break, Joshua Kimmich succeeded in a very tight shot, reflected by goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma. Immediately after that, Lionel Messi got the right to a dangerous free kick 30 meters from the Bayern goal and hit the wall. A goalless draw at the end of the half was its absolutely natural outcome.

At the beginning of the second half, PSG rebuilt and played more actively. The French midfielder Warren Zaire-Emery reminded of himself, who at 16 years and 343 days became the youngest player to be included in the starting lineup for the Champions League play-off match. His pass on the right flank was good, but Danilo could not complete the debutant’s pass. And then Bayern opened the scoring, organizing a goal from almost nothing. In this episode, Alphonso Davis’s high arc pass was excellent, and, of course, the strike of PSG graduate Kingsley Coman, who opened the gates of his former club with one touch.

The game opened up. At times it seemed that Bayern’s second goal was almost inevitable. Coman, who remained one of the best, rolled the ball to Eric Choupo-Moting, who from the center of the penalty area struck straight into Donnarumma in the fall. Soon, the same Choupo-Moting hit the post, and the Munich defenders, the Frenchman Benjamer Pavard and the Dutchman Mathijs le Ligt, meanwhile, held back the attacks of Messi and the replacement Mbappe. True, in the 73rd minute they still missed the Frenchman, who ran one on one with goalkeeper Jan Sommer. The Swiss goalkeeper saved his team the first time, then the second, after finishing off Neymar, and the third shot, with which Mbappe still hit the net in that attack, came from an offside position.

Still, PSG did not calm down. In the 76th minute, after a corner, Marquinhos sightedly headed the ball, but Sommer again rescued Bayern. Then its veteran Thomas Müller failed to complete the attack, in which four Bayern defenders were opposed by three Parisian defenders, after which PSG scored again – and again from offside. True, in this case it was microscopic. Before making a cross in the direction of Mbappe, the Portuguese Nuno Mendes, taking the pass from Neymar, was only half a foot closer to the gates of Bayern, closer to its defender. In the end, Pavard received a second yellow card due to a foul on Messi, but this did not help PSG. As a result – 0:1, and the second, home match for themselves, the Munich team will start as clear favorites of this pair.

In another match of the evening, Milan hosted Tottenham, and here, too, everything was decided by one goal. It was scored at the very beginning, already in the 7th minute, when the Spanish attacking midfielder of the hosts Braim Diaz successfully played to finish off after hitting Theo Hernandez.

Evgeny Fedyakov