And a very merry Christmas to you too, Luis Enrique. It was looking pretty hairy there for a while, as his Paris Saint-Germain side teetered on the brink of a group-stage humbling in the only competition that has ever really seemed to matter to them. Borussia Dortmund were ahead and so were Newcastle, and for all their vigour and enterprise the champions of France were doing their level best to push their coach towards the one door of the Paris advent calendar you really do not want to open.
Danger averted, just about, via a ghost of the present and a ghost of the future. Just as the cracker jokes were beginning to write themselves following Karim Adeyemi’s second-half goal, Kylian Mbappé and Warren Zaïre-Emery seized control of the game. Zaire-Emery’s spectacular equalising goal, created by Mbappé, was ultimately enough to scrape Paris through their group in second place, even if Milan’s late goal on Tyneside gave the closing minutes a sense of unbearable jeopardy.
And for all their flaws, their occasional porousness, an apparent paralysis at defending set pieces, Luis Enrique’s team would genuinely have been unlucky to go out here: undone as much by their profligacy in front of goal here and against Newcastle as by any kind of fundamental structural deficiency.
The irony is that many of the classic criticisms of Paris no longer really apply in the post-Messi, post-Neymar era. Since joining in the summer Luis Enrique has generated perhaps the most articulate vision of what this club should be. Not a decadent star vehicle, not a celebrity television show, but a modern balling unit, full of youth and pace and movement and fun. No longer do they defend with only eight men. In Lee Kang-in, Vitinha and Warren Zaïre-Emery they have one of the most exciting midfields in Europe: verve, mobility, cutting edge and an average age of less than 21.
And of course, they still have Kylian. Who, for all his outsized fame and power games remains at his best something pure and real and utterly spellbinding. Here he was on the stroke of half-time, setting Randal Kolo Muani clear with the sort of pinpoint pass that Lionel Messi would have admired in an imaginary mirror for several seconds. Here he was, sprinting on to a long ball, rounding the goalkeeper Gregor Kobel and denied only by a miraculous scything clearance off the line by Niklas Süle. Mbappé did a proper thespian double-take: eyes wide and disbelieving, as if he had just been the victim of a street magician.
Paris were the more dangerous side in those early knockings, but as pretty much all their coaches have eventually discovered, pretty processes only get you so far. In this competition you either do, or do not, and Joelinton’s first-half goal for Newcastle against Milan lent their task a kind of feverish urgency. Bradley Barcola hit the post. Kolo Muani ran through on goal after another Mbappé pass and bunted the ball just wide after a spine-tingling burst of speed. Meanwhile Dortmund, playing largely for their own amusement, were getting plenty of joy at the other end. Marco Reus forced a couple of good saves out of Gianluigi Donnarumma. A pleasant state of chaos had broken out, a game in which space was seemingly everywhere and nowhere all at once.
Finally, after 17 fruitless shots, the dam gave way. Both dams, in fact. Dortmund’s goal came courtesy of their former player Achraf Hakimi, a right-back whose brilliant attacking threat has always masked the occasional error in defence. Hakimi’s poor back-pass was picked up by Niclas Füllkrug, the giant striker sliding the ball across for Adeyemi to pass the ball in. With the precipice narrowing, Paris responded. Mbappé drove down the left wing past a quivering Marius Wolf, and squared the ball for Barcola, whose clever flick was demolished by Zaïre-Emery from 18 yards.
after newsletter promotion
Zaïre-Emery: what a player, by the way. Just 17 years of age, one of those unicorn footballers who seem to arrive fully developed, all the programmes and drills downloaded, armed both with extreme humility and the potential for extreme humiliation. There genuinely does not appear to be a weakness in his game. And as much as any player on the pitch he ran this second half: cutting off the service into the Dortmund midfield, getting and giving the ball quickly, all coiled energy and utter impatience.
In a twinkling, Milan had equalised on Tyneside, a goal that spread through the all-black Paris ultras like a supervirus. And with Dortmund displaying little appetite to close the game down, it ended in much the same sprawling pandemonium with which it had started. Mbappé had a goal disallowed for offside after another electrifying run to meet Hakimi’s pass. Milan’s second goal raised the stakes a little: a late Dortmund goal would still have eliminated Paris. But with Luis Enrique standing powerless on the touchline, hands in pockets, Paris played innocuous keep-ball for the final minutes amid a maelstrom of boos. The final whistle came as a blessed relief: tidings of comfort, if not so much joy.
