“The requirement is today, not tomorrow”, recognizes Pochettino

Seen from the outside, it’s a nice test that awaits PSG on Tuesday for the second day of the Champions League. And a first turn in this season where the Parisians must blow everything up. Opposed to Manchester City, a team which represents what is done or almost in Europe in recent seasons and who had dismissed them in the semi-finals last season without trembling of the chin, the players of Pochettino would do well to show that the porridge brugeoise was just a non-event on the way to this planned conquest. It is they, in any case, who have the pressure, at the accounting level and in the eyes of the followers.

“There’s no point in putting too much pressure on yourself”

But don’t count on Pochettino and Herrera to add more, of course. The Parisian coach and the best VRP of the club, officials at the press conference on the eve of the match, refuted the theory of the turning point on Monday. Obviously. “Each match that we play is a test for us, because for all the teams that we meet it is the match of the season, serves us the Spanish midfielder. We’re going to play a very strong team, that’s for sure. All fans talk and dream of the Champions League, but every game matters. This one is not final, there is no point in putting too much pressure on yourself. “

We will put aside the first part of the answer, which we have heard far too much in our life, to be interested in the rest. What Ander Herrera says is defended. We are barely in autumn, it is only the second day of the group stage, nor should we think of burning the Camp des Loges if there is not to be victory at the end of Tuesday. A rational approach would like that, anyway. But the problem is that by paying Messi to come frolic with Neymar and Mbappé, the Parisian club has made any normalcy in the way he is treated impossible.

“We know that we are expected”

“There are no other teams in Europe that have this obligation to win the Champions League, which in my opinion is unfair because there are a lot of other clubs that can win this competition,” notes Herrera. But that’s how it is, we take and we do with it ”. The Basque still forgets his opponent a little. Pep Guardiola, at the head of City since 2016 with unlimited means, still hasn’t won the competition either, and the English press does not go a day without reminding him.

The Catalan, who failed closer than ever last season, could write a book on the subject. Asked about the impressive Parisian armada on Monday, he replied with the air of someone who knows the subject all too well. “It takes time sometimes in football. People are very impatient, they don’t always give it to us, ”he noted.

City a little early, really?

His Parisian counterpart can only agree. Gunned down with questions before and after each meeting on the progress – or rather the lack of progress – of his team, Mauricio Pochettino remains straight in his boots. After an extraordinary start to the season, between the crazy arrival of Messi, the international truce badly fitted in the calendar and the disparate states of form of each other, he knows that each week that passes will be better than the previous one.

“We are a team under construction. It’s an ongoing process, we have to look back a bit, see where we came from and where we are now, he says. We will play against a team led by the best coach in the world in my opinion. It’s a club that also has the dream of winning the Champions League, but they are a little ahead of us. That said, Pochettino has not forgotten what is at stake in Tuesday’s game. “We know that in Paris, the requirement is today, not tomorrow. We are expected, we must respond present. »Still the best way to buy the time he claims.