Manchester City blew a 2-0 lead against Paris Saint-Germain 4-2 in their penultimate Champions League match.
Jack Grealish and Erling Haaland made it 2-0 for the visitors at the start of the second half, but Ousmane Dembélé and Bradley Barcola made it 2-2 within five minutes.
Smelling blood, PSG looked for the third goal and found it in the 79th minute with a header from Joao Neves that almost completed the recovery. Gonçalo Ramos sealed the victory with a resounding goal in the 94th minute.
The defeat leaves Manchester City in a playoff position with just one game remaining, while PSG is well placed to qualify for the playoffs.
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Paris Saint-Germain Manchester City 2 – City capitulate as first 8 Champions League hopes come to an end
No time for Manchester City to feel sorry for themselves as they are back in Premier League action on Saturday.
Pep Guardiola will face his former manager, Enzo Maresca, when the champions host Chelsea at 5:30 p. m. (GMT) start. Be sure to sign up again as we’ll cover this setting live.
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The renewed Champions League reaches the knockout stage and within a week we will know which groups will qualify for the next levels.
The teams that finish 9th to 24th will play a two-legged play-off, in which, as things stand, Manchester City, who are currently in 25th place after their 4-2 defeat against Paris Saint- Germain will not participate in the play-off.
There will be plenty of jeopardy in the final round of fixtures on Wednesday, February 29, as these sides chance their arm at a top-eight spot or, in City’s case, simply making the play-offs and avoiding elimination from the competition altogether.
Find out how it all works below.
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How will the Champions League play-offs unfold?
The play-off draw will take place on January 31 at the House of European Football in Nyon, Switzerland.
The knockout play-offs begin on February 11 and 12, with the second legs on February 18 and 19. From the play-offs onwards, the tournament is a bracket, ending with the final at the Allianz Arena in Munich, Germany, on May 31.
The full knockout dates are below:
It’s another frustrating setback for City, but they will be grateful to have come into it with a slight cushion.
According to The Athletic’s projections, Guardiola’s side had just a nine per cent chance of elimination heading into the game and things haven’t changed too dramatically with one more game to save their skins.
Club Brugge is City’s rival next Wednesday, one of the two groups with 11 points. If City beat the Belgian team, they would surpass them on goal difference and be among the top 24. Anything less than a win and City are in trouble.
PSG, on the other hand, resumed its crusade with an important victory. Arriving in Stuttgart on the last day, also with 10 points, will not be easy.
However, to avoid defeat, Brugge and City will face each other, and at least one of those teams will have fewer problems or a lower goal difference.
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Paris Saint-Germain four Manchester City 2 – City capitulate as eight best Champions League hopes end
Paris Saint-Germain have never previously won in the Champions League after trailing by two goals.
Tonight’s result is also their first win despite having scored two goals in all competitions since May 2012 against Valenciennes in Ligue 1 (0-2 to 4-3).
Let The Athletic’s chart show you the standings.
PSG narrowly slipped into the play-off positions and is in position among 24.
Meanwhile, Manchester City remain stuck in 25th place, even outside the play-off places.
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Pep Guardiola was interesting in his post-match assessment on TNT Sports. He had a smile on his face, fairly accepting of the performance and the scoreline, and was full of praise for PSG.
“They were getting faster and faster, they won the duels, we couldn’t cope. They were fast. The most productive team won. The game was never as we were looking for.
“To play you have to play. To protect the result you have to keep the ball, we didn’t have it. They had more, they attacked better, that’s why it was more difficult.
Those words echoed City’s draw away against Brentford from last mid-week, another match they failed to win despite leading 2-0.
Asked if it would be unthinkable for City to be knocked out before the last 16, he added: “It may just happen. We’ll see. “
“If we don’t win (against Club Brugge), we don’t deserve it. All the away games we have are difficult, but that is the reality. We didn’t get enough points.
There are no apologies from Pep Guardiola, who seems very resigned to his team being ruled tonight.
“We had our moments and they had their moments, they were better,” he told TNT Sports.
“They were quicker, faster, they won the duels, with the ball, they had one more man in the middle and we could not cope with that.
“We accept the defeat because the best team won and we have a last chance (to qualify) at home against Club Brugge.”
Impressive reaction from PSG after beating Manchester City 4-2.
So many performances: Vitinha, Joao Neves, Bradley Barcola, Ousmane Dembélé, to name four.
I just wanted to comment that I think the refereeing team of Szymon Marciniak and his colleagues were still very much in the game.
They answered all calls correctly.
The one thing which could maybe have been improved: the length of the late check to allow Ramos’ goal, it clearly came off Gvardiol’s shoulder but took a little while to give it.
Other than that? Perfect.
These are the topics of The Briefing via The Athletic’s Oliver Kay, Sam Lee and Thom Harris; You can read them at the following link.
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Warren Zaire-Emery has had a particularly strong impact off the bench.
It’s never an easy task to replace the physical, left-footed Fabian Ruiz, however he slotted in well alongside Barcola and linked up better with him than Ruiz did.
That in turn allowed more opportunity for left-back Nuno Mendes to make big underlapping runs, and Mendes continuing to pop up in promising positions helped PSG creates the chances that eventually saw them overhaul the City advantage.
…they just can’t hang on to a lead.
A damning statistic from our friends at Opta: tonight marks the ninth time Manchester City have failed to win a game in which they were leading all competitions this season.
This is the most of any Premier League club in 2024-25.
Very different from them.
Whenever you think that Manchester City’s season couldn’t get any worse, you suffer a result like tonight.
They were poor in the first half but gained an almighty foothold thanks to goals from Grealish and Haaland.
Then came the PSG tornado that tore them to shreds and spat them out.
A half-bright moment. PSG were excellent, City were very easy to play.
A return of PSG!
After that crazy moment in Paris, let’s take a look at what happened tonight across Europe.
Big wins for Arsenal and Real Madrid, while Bayern Munich were convincingly beaten in Holland by Feyenoord.
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Arsenal 3 Dinamo Zagreb 0 – Nwaneri welcomes return as Arteta’s team closes in on knockouts
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João Neves has produced an absolute clinic against City.
A 5-foot-7 man running in midfield has my heart.
He broke lines, won duels, with wise positioning he crushed the draw and also gave himself the victory.
Great, performance.
Overall, Joao Neves was the one who finished the comeback.
He missed a smart chance at the far post after a loose shot went wide in the first half and no one recovered. This time he went there.
For his goal, he got it all right, heading into the floor smartly, and it skidded past Ederson.
Seven of seven tackles won, 55 passes completed and seven shots taken.
It was a proper all-rounder performance from the 20-year-old, and he nabbed the winning goal. Merited.
That had been coming, hadn’t it?
I didn’t expect PSG’s eventual winner to come from a loose kick, however, PSG were on top of City since losing 2-0.