In the first matches of the 1/8 finals of the Champions League, PSG hosts Real Sociedad, and Lazio hosts Bayern Munich.

Today, in the first matches of the 1/8 finals of the Champions League, PSG hosts Real Sociedad, which, after a series of inexpressive performances, no longer seems as dangerous an opponent as it seemed immediately after the play-off draw, and Lazio – which has just experienced a terrible psychological blow due to the devastating defeat from Bayer to Bayern.

The pair that brought PSG and Real Sociedad together when they were just formed by the opening round draw in mid-December 2023 looked terribly curious: a French giant undergoing a not-so-simple restructuring, with difficulty making it out of the group, against a not-so-powerful in terms of the resources available, but a very stylish Spanish club. But over the past two months, ideas about the situation have become a little different.

Nothing happened to PSG to allow us to see signs of an inevitable catastrophe in the Paris perestroika and the problems associated with it. On the contrary, he rather added to the fortress. PSG has losses (the main ones – Milan Skriniar, Presnel Kimpembe, Nuno Mendes – concern the center and flanks of defense), but they are not critical. The game against small opponents from the French championship is, as a rule, quite convincing. The gap from them already promises a calm road to gold, so in the last meeting, PSG coach Luis Enrique could allow Kylian Mbappe to rest and keep Achraf Hakimi, Warren Zaire-Emery, Vitinha on the bench, the Parisians still won – 3:1.

But with Real Sociedad, for which the Russian midfielder Arsen Zakharyan plays not only constantly, but quite regularly, something unpleasant happened in the winter. All the stylishness suddenly disappeared somewhere. Instead, melancholy reigned.

In ten matches of the Spanish championship that preceded the resumption of the European Cup season, Real Sociedad won only two victories. And this despite the fact that during this period he did not intersect with the main giants of the championship – Real Madrid, Barcelona and Atlético. What is most striking is that in these ten meetings, the assertive and inventive team scored a measly half a dozen goals in the fall. They weren’t there in Saturday’s home game against the humble Osasuna, to which the Sansebastians lost 0:1.

At the same time, for them, injuries are like a headache. There are more short- or long-term departures (and these are often notable figures, such as Sheraldo Becker, Kieran Tierney, Alvaro Odriozola, Carlos Fernandez, Aichen Muñoz, Mikel Oyarzabal) than PSG, and the depth of Real Sociedad’s squad is much less than in Paris.

In the confrontation that opens with the Roman match between Lazio and Bayern, if not for the fresh context, in theory, one should expect something similar to what the previous battle of these clubs in the Champions League resulted in. This also happened in the 1/8 finals three years ago. Then everything ended sadly for the Italian team. Away, Bayern defeated it with a score of 4:1, and in the home match, although they played it, apparently remembering the margin of safety, with some laziness, they still prevailed – 2:1.

No matter how hard you try, you won’t find clear reasons to believe that the situation is fundamentally different now. Now, if this had happened last season, then yes, opposition would have been appropriate. A year ago, Lazio really looked like a club with which any giant should be reckoned: second place in the Italian Championship after the magnificent Napoli, a juicy game from coach Maurizio Sarri. But this season the Romans are tumbling all the time. There was never a stretch of at least three weeks in which they managed to maintain stability and a high level – a couple of good matches were invariably followed by a bad one, or even a couple of bad ones in a row.

In the last match before the playoffs, the Romans, however, were quite good. They beat Cagliari 3:1, and their leaders – Ciro Immobile, Felipe Anderson – sparkled with freshness and sharpness. But the opponent was still too unprepossessing to talk about a radical transformation of the team based on the success in the meeting with him.

However, there’s no escape from fresh context either. It is a fact that Bayern went to Italy having suffered such a blow, which, as a rule, does not pass without a trace. We are talking about Saturday’s defeat with a score of 0:3, essentially humiliating in nature, from Bayer: after it, the prospects of the Munich team in the “golden race” were suddenly covered in a thick fog. Another thing is that Lazio in its current form, of course, does not look like a team that is capable of implementing the recipe proposed by Leverkusen for destroying the German football monster with endless and complex movements of players and inclusion of flanks.

Alexey Dospehov