Kylian Mbappe refuses to dream of leaving PSG after Champions League exit football news

Kylian Mbappe will not get his dream departure from Paris Saint-Germain after their Champions League exit at the hands of Borussia Dortmund on Tuesday denied him playing his last game for the club in the final at Wembley next month. The 2018 World Cup winner will leave PSG after seven years when his contract expires at the end of this season, with Real Madrid his likely next destination. They hoped to lead the Qatar-owned club to Champions League glory for the first time in history, and were favorites to defeat Dortmund at the Parc des Princes in the semi-final second leg.

But they failed to overcome a goal deficit in the first leg, with Mats Hummels scoring the only goal on the night to give Dortmund a 2–0 aggregate victory.

Mbappé was one of four PSG players to hit the woodwork in the second half, and coach Luis Enrique complained that his team – who had taken 31 attempts on goal – had been “unlucky”.

“I don’t really like to talk about misfortune,” Mbappé said after a while.

“When you’re good, you don’t hit the post, you score. I tried to help as best I could. When I say we need to be more clinical, I’m the one I am the one who has to score. But this is life, we need to lift ourselves up.”

That will be hard for PSG to do, given how close they were to reaching the final for the second time four years after their defeat against Bayern Munich in Lisbon.

This will always be as close as Mbappe came to winning the European Cup with his hometown team, for whom he is their all-time top scorer with 255 goals.

A total of 42 of those players have appeared in Europe’s elite club competition, but they were unable to add to that number in both legs against Dortmund.

“The end of his dream” was the headline in sports daily L’Equipe, which gave a scathing assessment of the France captain’s performance and gave him a score of two out of 10.

Another European disaster?

Relegated to a fifth-place finish in the Bundesliga feels like a disaster for a club that has invested as much as PSG over the last few years since the 2011 Qatari takeover.

It is the latest in a long series of huge disappointments in the Champions League knockout rounds, following their 6-1 defeat to Barcelona in the last 16 in 2017 despite winning the first leg 4-0.

“PSG hit their heads against the glass ceiling on a night when the sky was no limit,” reflected Vincent Duluc in L’Equipe.

“The truth is that this abolition is quite a downfall given the huge opportunity on offer.”

However, the truth is that despite the presence of Mbappé, this PSG team was not seriously expected to reach this far.

The squad was overhauled ahead of this season following the departures of Lionel Messi and Neymar and Luis Enrique was brought in to oversee the new project.

“When I arrived my objective was to compete as much as possible for every trophy,” the Spanish coach said on Tuesday.

His team has already won Ligue 1 and Mbappe’s last game will now be the French Cup final against Lyon on May 25.

lack of experience

But perhaps their lack of experience at this level ultimately cost them – according to statisticians Opta, the average age of their starting line-up was 24 years and 157 days, the highest of any team in the Champions League semi-final against Arsenal. Was young. Manchester United in 2009.

Luis Enrique will have to hope that the experience gained by his young players can help them next year.

“We need to remember that this is a new project with a new coach, with a lot of changes. There are a lot of positives and good things to look forward to next season,” captain Marquinhos told broadcaster Canal Plus. “

It’s hard to imagine how PSG could be better equipped to win the Champions League without Mbappé, even though they will certainly spend big bucks on a replacement.

The coach has regularly either left Mbappe out of his squad over the past three months or removed his star player from domestic league games, apparently in the name of planning for next season.

That strategy ultimately didn’t help PSG win the trophy they really craved this campaign, and Mbappé – now 25 – will be hoping to finally get his hands on it after leaving Paris.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)