Tuesday, May 7, 2024
Year : 2, Issue : 19
Paris Saint-Germain are bidding to overturn a 1-0 first-leg deficit and beat Borussia Dortmund in their Champions League semi-final return match on Tuesday, with the aim of bringing the curtain down on the Kylian Mbappe era at the club in the final at Wembley.
The only time PSG have previously appeared in the biggest match in club football turned out to be a depressingly flat occasion, with the French side losing 1-0 to Bayern Munich behind closed doors in Lisbon in 2020, at the height of the pandemic.
Reaching the June 1 showpiece in London, and playing before a crowd of 90,000 against either Real Madrid or Bayern again, would be a different occasion entirely.
Now 25 and the captain of France, Mbappe has become the Parisians’ all-time top scorer with 255 goals in 305 appearances so far, including 43 this season alone.
He has 48 in the Champions League — a tally which includes six with Monaco in his breakthrough 2016/17 campaign — and Tuesday’s second leg against Dortmund would be the ideal time for him to bring up the half-century.
Source: AFP