ClapOne look at the UEFA Champions League final will tell a tale to Paris Saint-Germain. Two teams who have shown signs of immense stability and tactical flexibility over a period of time will play in the final of the competition. One of those teams did not spend a single penny in the last two transfer windows. The man who they last signed back in the January of 2018 guided them to the final, 16 months after having been deemed to be surplus to requirement by PSG themselves.
It will be unfair to say that selling Lucas Moura was a bad decision, but the way the club has done business is something that lets them down big time.
With rumors going around linking Massimiliano Allegri with a move to the Parisiens, it will be another attempt to push the reset button after just one season. Ask the Champions League finalists, they will tell you that it will never work.
Despite all the money that they boast of, PSG struggle for an identity every single time. Despite all the riches, they can’t go past the line and mess things up at crucial points in the knockout stages. The lack of an iron-willed mentality costs them big.
It is the lack of a long-term plan that lets them down, in the first place. There is little consistency in decision-making. One season, the plan is to go a single way. Some months later, a new plan is born. A club like Manchester City, Liverpool and Tottenham has proved that a side will only prosper in the Champions League if they have the same manager over a long term and have acquired a particular identity.
And over that period, they have kept their identity and have matured as a team together. They have discovered that playing in their own way is not the only way of playing. Times will come when they have to be pragmatic and give up their own ways. Both of them have done that a lot of times in the Champions League this season.
PSG did that against Liverpool in the group stages but could never find that side of himself in the Round of 16 against Manchester United. They lacked the will and know-how to go further than that. But a season later, this team would have acquired more experience of playing in the competition. They will have more of an identity than they have now. They will be in the Thomas Tuchel mold.
Pushing the reset button to bring Allegri in will put them back again. They’ll have to build a plan again and that will delay the progress by another two or three seasons, even though Allegri is a brilliant manager.
The Champions League is a ball game that is won by sides that have stability, not money. Teams that acquire an identity and achieve flexibility in style and maturity over time. PSG have lessons to learn from that and implement that into their club structure before it gets too late.
