Mbappé, Messi and a torch cheekily back-flicked down the wing

It was a fairly instructive evening in Paris last night. Leo Messi wandered around the Parc des Princes with a scribble of comic-strip-cloud misery constantly hovering above his head. With a faint but unmistakable air of hopelessness and ennui enveloping the poor little chap, the Fiver couldn’t help but notice his increasing resemblance to Charlie Brown. When he missed that penalty, we found ourselves hitting rewind, just to double check whether Lucy had moved the ball just before he kicked it. Good grief.

Fortunately for Paris Saint-Germain, just as Messi was working through his existential crises, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé combined in the last minute of injury time to give the French side a slender first-leg advantage against Real Madrid and dig their teammate out of his penalty-hell hole. It felt epochal, though there was less a sense of the simple passing of a torch, more of one being cheekily back-flicked down the wing then confidently swept through someone’s legs in the circus-troupe style. Fortunately the torch handed over by Messi had nearly gone out, so there was never any real danger of Thibaut Courtois’ low-hanging fruit being accidentally flambéed.

There was also the sense that if Manchester City ever get a shot at either of these otherwise ponderous teams, things could get ugly at warp speed. City utterly eviscerated Sporting in Lisbon, the tie as good as over in half an hour. Bernardo Silva in particular enjoyed himself, his two goals silencing the boos of fans who simply can’t forget his legendary stint at arch-rivals Benfica, for whom he made three appearances as a 19-year-old. Only a fool – or Thomas Tuchel, who has their number – would want to draw City in the next round.

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