Luis Enrique insisted that his team could become better without the France captain, and he’s being proven right so far this season.
Vitinha still can’t quite get his head around the fact that he got to play in the same side as Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe. “It was like a dream,” the Paris Saint-Germain midfielder told The Times earlier this month. “It just didn’t feel real for a long time… I will remember it for the rest of my career because I played with the best. It’s something I will tell my children, and my grandchildren, one day.
As Vitinha also admitted, though, it wasn’t always easy for him. He couldn’t sit back and enjoy watching three of the greatest talents the game has ever seen work their magic. Messi, Neymar and Mbappe have never been particularly interested in tracking back, so others had to pick up the slack.
Vitinha had plenty of “chores”, as he put it, and his hard work didn’t always get the credit it deserved. In the very same infamous game against Montpellier that Mbappe and Neymar squabbled over a spot-kick, the French forward also turned his back on the play at one point, simply because he hadn’t received the ball from Vitinha.
It was a pathetic display of petulance, but also a perfect illustration of the consequences of over-indulging superstars – the main reason why Paris Saint-Germain’s project repeatedly failed to deliver the Champions League title that club president Nasser Al-Khelaifi promised more than a decade ago.
Things are different now, though. Messi, Neymar and Mbappe have all departed Parc des Princes, and while the latter’s exit was particularly traumatic, the feeling within the dressing room is that PSG are actually stronger – or at least more united – than ever before going into Wednesday’s Champions League last-16 first-leg clash with Liverpool.
“I really do prefer this kind of project,” Vitinha said of PSG’s recent but very noticeable shift towards investing in youth rather than proven performers. “The way that they want to build the team, the long-term vision, it’s the best way.
It’s certainly working out well so far this season for PSG, who are in sensational form ahead of the visit of Liverpool. They’ve won their last five games in Ligue 1 to open up a 13-point lead at the top of the table (scoring 17 times in the process), beat Brest 10-0 on aggregate in their all-French Champions League play-off and, last week, routed Stade Briochin 7-0 in the quarter-finals of the Coupe de France.
Given the recent goal glut, many supporters and pundits are now wondering if PSG are actually better without Mbappe, whom they relied on so heavily in attack last season, and it’s a question that Vitinha doesn’t shy away from answering.
“We don’t have a problem talking about it,” the Portugal international said. “Kylian is one of the best in the world, if not the best. We knew it would be difficult [without him] because you can’t replace him directly. But you replace him with the team. That’s what we did. That takes time, but I think we’re collectively better and we have shown it already. Sometimes the goals don’t come as easily as before [with Mbappe], but we have a lot of great forwards.” There’s no disputing that claim.
When Mbappe finally dumped PSG after years of flirting with a move to Real Madrid, the understandable fear was that the French giants would struggle to score goals, particularly after their one orthodox No.9 Goncalo Ramos was sidelined by an ankle injury just 20 minutes into their Ligue 1 opener at Le Havre on August 16.
Randal Kolo Muani initially looked like he might help fill the void up front, but his form flatlined and he was offloaded to Juventus during the winter transfer window. By that stage, though, PSG were happy to let him leave, as their attack had caught fire.
Ramos’ return to action at the tail end of November was an undoubted boost, but the real revelations were Bradley Barcola and Ousmane Dembele. Barcola had already proven himself one of the most exciting young talents in world football during his first season in the French capital; the one question was whether he could add goals to his game. This season, he has, with 22-year-old already up to 17 goals in 39 appearances so far this season.
Rather remarkably, Dembele, the worst signing in Barcelona’s history for so many reasons and arguably the game’s greatest unfulfilled talent, has proven even more prolific than Barcola. The incredibly frustrating winger has netted 26 times in just 33 outings, which is an outstanding tally for a player whose previous career-high, single-season haul was 14 goals in 2018-19. Worryingly for Liverpool, 21 of Dembele’s goals this season have come in his last 16 appearances – making him one of the form players on the planet right now.
As Vitinha alluded to, though, PSG are no longer reliant upon the excellence of individuals. Their strength has become the collective, which was Luis Enrique’s objective all along.
“I was very brave last season when I told you that we would have a better team in attack and defence [without Mbappe] and the numbers are now there to prove it,” the coach told reporters earlier this month. “Of course, we would have liked to keep Kylian, because everyone liked Kyky and we were faced with a situation that we did not want. But it happened and the players took replacing him as a challenge and the whole team is responding very positively, at a spectacular level. I told you that rather than having a player who scores 40 goals, I wanted players who all score a lot.” And that’s exactly what he’s got now.
Dembele, Barcola and Ramos (12) are all in double figures for goals in the current campaign, while Desire Doue has seven while Vitinha and Lee Kang-in have six goals apiece, with the wonderful Joao Neves also weighing in with four strikes of his own.
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia has also bagged a couple since joining in January from Napoli, and his arrival has only increased PSG’s options in attack, and particularly out wide. Indeed, there are few teams in Europe better equipped to exploit the most glaring weakness in Arne Slot’s tremendous Liverpool team: the full-backs.
Trent Alexander-Arnold’s defensive deficiencies are well known, and he ominously struggled to contain Jeremy Doku at the Etihad Stadium last Sunday week, but Andy Robertson’s decline this season has been startling and a major cause for concern for the Reds. The Scot is going to need an awful lot of support to cope with whichever winger PSG put on the right-hand side, given that player will also be ably supported by the marauding Achraf Hakimi, the best attacking right-back in the game today.
There are obviously still some doubts over this PSG side – not least because they’ve faced several vastly inferior teams during their recent scoring spree. Furthermore, the mere fact that they’ve drawn top seeds Liverpool in the Champions League last 16 is a reflection of their shockingly slow start to the competition’s league phase, which saw them lose three of their first five games. They were particularly poor in their 2-0 loss at Arsenal back in October, with Luis Enrique left lamenting his side’s inability to win a single duel at the Emirates.
PSG have improved and matured an awful lot since then, though, and it was seriously impressive to see how they handled the pressure after finding themselves 2-0 down in the second half of their must-win meeting with Manchester City on January 22. Since that crucial win, in fact, PSG have looked like a different team, one working in complete unison and total harmony under a coach that was always supremely confident of coping without the club’s all-time leading goal-scorer.
PSG have clearly moved on from Mbappe, and while they may not win the Champions League this season, they’ve at least proving that there might be a way to do so without him.
