Well, I just watched the match again.
Several things caused us this loss and this poor performance, other than PSG's superior individual quality on some key positions.
We stubbornly pressed players that should have not been pressed. This rendered our pressing to be suicidal and this also caused our players to be dead tired late in the game. We finished the last 15 mins in particular on our knees. If PSG had their main players available, they could have scored 3-4 goals in the last stretch of the game.
This is on Flick, simply put he got outclassed by Luis Enrique. Why? Why would you press everything that moves? Just keep position and press strategically, on key progression routes, which are well known and studied by now for PSG. We pressed like idiots. Completely broken down the entire structure. Some low-threat players got pressed, while some other marquee players and playmakers for PSG were left to do as they pleased.
Once the initial press was beaten relatively easy, PSG had quick access to open players.
Rashford had an extremely lazy performance in defense. Ran sporadically, and chaotically, showing a poor tactical understanding of the game and a mentality problem. Just not a player cut out for a big game except if he somehow scores a great goal.
Pedri very poor match. Poorer than it seemed last night. De Jong not great either. Both also suffered because Olmo played as if he was not part of the midfield three. Maybe by design, considering he is a no10 sort of, or CAM, and not played as an 8. Either way, midfield was outnumbered easily.
We somehow managed to combine idiotic pressing with defending deep in 2nd half. Caught between two equally bad ends.
Expected to find more laziness for Lamine, but not that much. In fact, his selfishness in offense at times was his biggest issue. Played as if he had a chip on his shoulders, reminded me of a Vinicius performance from last season. No surprise both are clownish characters.
Expected Mendes to stand out more than Hakimi, but Hakimi had an absolute partidazo. Vitinha as well in the 2nd half. Mendes maybe steals the show more while seeing the game live, but Hakimi is the superior player once you pay close attention.
Zabarny was damn hard to press. If we figured he was a liability on the ball, we were dead wrong.
Ferran Torres had a poor match.
The best in defense was Kounde, followed by Eric Garcia. In individual duels, Cubarsi and especially Martin were poor. Martin lost many individual duels indeed. At least 5-6. 3-4 times to Barcola alone, 2-3 times when Hakimi's fitness and stamina ran us ragged in the 2nd half. He is responsible to 70-80% of failed 1 vs 1 duels. By comparison, Kounde won more 1 vs 1 duels than he lost.
In fact, in the first half, the only serious situation Barcola had was when he switched sides to have a taste of Martin (shot over the post after he punishes Martin individually twice in the same play). Barcola probably switched sides as he wasn't getting involved much vs Kounde on our right.
Over watching the game again, the biggest cause for the loss was a completely botched pressing approach, that barely troubled PSG. We were incredibly over ambitious on the night to downright stupid, without either the required quality on the ball, the required athleticism, and the brains to know how to adapt to a better opponent.
At times, as dumb and suicidal as our press was 80% of the time, occasionally we did catch PSG, this is how we created some of our few chances. But it was far too rare, and in those instances where we did make it happen, Ferran and Lamine were considerably worse than Rashford.
Also, it was incredibly dumb to ask from our fullbacks to press the other teams' fullbacks. We did this repeatedly. What the hell were we thinking, those are 80m runs. You humanly can't do that. You don't see Hakimi do that lol. PSG are far more strategic and clever than us.
Instead of doing this, be smart. Why use the forwards to fucking press the keepers or the CBs? Fucking cut the passes to likes of Vitinha, Hakimi, and Mendes, the players who make their entire game. Let the keepers stay on the ball, let Zabarny stay on the ball, let Pacho stay on the ball. And aproach them from an angle while trying to have likes of Mendes, Vitinha, and Hakimi in your cover shadow. That's smart pressing.
Instead, we idiotically pressed everything that moves as if Zabarny and Hakimi pose the same value of threat. Sorry, but it was a match very poorly prepared. We did try more than it seemed on live watch, but the plan was doomed from the get go.
