PSG's Champions League run gives hope to flailing Manchester City

Finally, for the first time, Paris Saint-Germain are one victory away from winning Europe’s top club competition and realising the great ambition of their state-owned benefactor, Qatar Sports Investments. They have won 18 major domestic trophies since QSI bought the club in 2011, but the Champions League is the hardest trophy to buy. Just ask Manchester City.

When Neymar moved to PSG from Barcelona for £200m three years ago he was seen as the final piece of their Champions League jigsaw and I am sure he would have expected to have won it by now. The French league does not have the appeal of Spain or England – it was the prospect of being the key man in a team destined for European success that would have drawn him to Paris. But this is the highest ambition in club football and normally it takes a while to get there, which, for a group of players used to success, can be extremely frustrating.

Kevin De Bruyne’s reaction to City’s elimination by Lyon in the quarter-finals – “different year, same stuff” – was evidence of that. Pep Guardiola has built a brilliant team, but one that again and again have not quite been good enough in the toughest competition of all. City had won the Premier League before he arrived but the signing of Guardiola – like Neymar’s in Paris – was supposed to trigger European success. It has not happened.

They have not even come close: in Guardiola’s four seasons they have not been further than the quarter‑finals. They can argue that on the balance of play they could have beaten Lyon and point to Raheem Sterling missing an open goal that should have brought City level at 2-2 a few seconds before they went 3-1 down, just like last season when an extremely tight stoppage-time VAR decision denied them against Tottenham.

These hard-luck stories are distractions: ultimately they are not getting over the line, yet they have a manager who people feel very uncomfortable criticising.

City will look back and say: ‘Of all the years we have been trying this is when it could have happened.’ There were reports of a funereal atmosphere in their dressing room after the Lyon defeat and they will be asking themselves some difficult questions. The big one is: “Can we expect to do better next year unless we make significant changes and if not what are the changes we should make?”

That result could also have significant long-term implications for Guardiola, for the ownership group and for the recruitment model.

PSG’s success exposes City’s failure. They are two teams with similar funding models who have shared similar frustrations, but one of them is now laying those ghosts to rest. It takes time to build a team that can win the Champions League, but Guardiola has had that.

Nobody seems to be asking whether success in Europe is something he is capable of achieving and increasingly the evidence suggests it is not. I am not saying he should be sacked, but after another failure in Europe and finishing 18 points behind Liverpool in the league, talk of his future certainly feels like a taboo subject.

If  in reaching the final  PSG have left City behind, they have also given them hope, that a team who expect success in Europe but have become accustomed to failure can turn the tide. I don’t think they are better than City but they do have key players who elevate their team.

Neymar deserves a lot of credit – in the past two games he has been exceptional and is performing like the player we expected him to be. His dribbling, his ability to go past players, is a joy to watch, and the back-heeled assist for Ángel Di María’s goal against Leipzig in the semi-final was incredible.

On first viewing it looked as if the ball had deflected off him. It took several replays to see what Neymar had done in real time in the pressure of a key match. You cannot even call it vision, because he cannot see the goal or Di María when he makes his move. It is almost as if he felt the Argentinian’s presence behind him.

And then the back-heel itself, the way he used the pace of the ball to flick it so deftly, is beautiful.

You could say PSG had an easy run to the final, beating Atalanta, who were without Josip Ilicic, in the quarter-finals and a Leipzig missing Timo Werner in the semis, but their key players showed their class.

Bayern Munich, though, whom they face in the final, are the more experienced, well-honed side. Manuel Neuer, Jérôme Boateng, David Alaba and Thomas Müller were in the team when they last won the Champions League in 2013 (and Robert Lewandowski was playing for the losing side, Borussia Dortmund). They have pace on both flanks and youth in Alphonso Davies, the 19-year-old Canadian left-back who has the world at his feet, and I expect Bayern to be dominant if they can keep Neymar, Di María and Kylian Mbappé under control.

The knockout stages have been really enjoyable. Perhaps it helps that they have been one-off games at neutral venues, but then last year the two-leg ties threw up the most ridiculous entertainment and the final, the only one-off game at a neutral venue, was a terrible disappointment. In the end it is not about the format, it’s about the teams.