UEFA Champions League 2021/22 Preview: Can Pochettino’s PSG do the double over Guardiola’s Man City?

The 2021-22 Champions League is back again after the final international break of the year. The 5th week of the group stage features some interesting reverse clashes with PSG travelling to Manchester City being the headline one of the lots. 

PSG have had a very tough start to their season despite bringing in some exciting talents and possibly the greatest of the game in Lionel Messi. Pochettino has struggled to get the best out of the team and fit all of his best players with proper tactical identity. 

Manchester City, on the other hand, are slowly gaining ground in the league and are closing the gap to league leaders Chelsea after an impressive win against local rivals Manchester United in the derby. Both teams would be looking to clinch the group with just one point separating them. 

This tactical preview features the analysis of the team’s tactics and how either team go into the match from a tactical standpoint. Let’s begin the preview. 

PSG’s structural issues vs their overall quality

PSG under Mauricio Pochettino are regarded as the best team in Europe on paper headlined by a forward trio having possibly the greatest player in history, one of the best players of his generation and the best U-23 player in the world. They are also coached by one of the most promising coaches in the world while also acquiring the likes of Hakimi, Wijnaldum, etc to possibly construct the best squad on paper in Europe.

But same cannot be said when we see them on the field where Pochettino has struggled to get the best out of the players and find a system to get the best out of all of them at the same time. They generally lined up in a 4-3-3 but have also used the 4-2-3-1 during situations in games. 

In the first fixture between the two clubs where despite PSG winning the game, Man City were able to suffocate PSG and their build-up to a very large extent. They deployed a heavy man-man pressing against their opponent where the front players were all closed down immediately. 

The issue in the above image that PSG had were they were also subjected to Man City’s press was the use of the Keeper in the build-up here. Donnaruma is very good on the ball and PSG didn’t look to use his skills to play out of the press. Especially dragging City to one side and a pass to him would have ensured a pass from him to the opposite full-back, in this case, Hakimi as City have been dragged to one side of the pitch. 

The issue was even more escalated against Leipzig where they specifically targetted Danilo’s lack of ability in build-up compared to Verrati. There were multiple times that Leipzig were able to turn the ball over due to this very high up the pitch and PSG survived on many occasions. We can see an example of that below where Danilo has dropped deep to receive the ball but his body angle doesn’t aid him to receive and turn immediately with two Leipzig players in close proximity to him and to take the ball away from him.