Kylian Mbappé pounces to push PSG into driving seat against Real Sociedad

“Many would like to see us dead,” Luis Enrique had announced, theatrically if not entirely incorrectly, after the narrowest squeak through the group stages in the autumn.

Midway though this last 16 tie Paris Saint-Germain remain not just alive in the Champions League but strong favourites to register their first knockout victory in three years. They were driven on at the Parc des Princes by the edge of Kylian Mbappé and the energy of a reconfigured team that is, for all its anti-galactico stylings, geared ever more to feeding the ball towards its incumbent Sun King.

Real Sociedad came to Paris ready to play. They pressed fearlessly in a thrilling first half, but were picked off in an increasingly limb-weary second by the high-craft of the Paris attack, Mbappé and Bradley Barcola scoring the goals to make it 2-0 at the end of an agreeably open first leg.

For the opening half of this Champions League last 16 tie Real Sociedad and Paris Saint-Germain produced a game of beguiling contrasts. La Real pressed recklessly high, Paris reeled off a series of surgical breaks, the entire spectacle a thrilling game of contrasts. On the one hand an apparently fearless underdog in arguably the biggest game in its history; on the other the high-speed brilliance of Mbappé and Ousmane Dembélé, undercut as ever by the usual high-wire Parisian neuroses at this stage of the competition.

Somehow half-time arrived with the game still goalless, marked by a shot from Mikel Merino that dipped viciously and clipped the top of the PSG bar with Gianluigi Donnarumma flailing.

La Real are one of those clubs people love to love, a cosy, wholesome kind of place, built out of ideas like community, stability and collectivism. They came to Paris as unnerving outsiders, a team that likes to swarm and steal the ball from the front. Here they lined up with nine Spanish nationals, four of those Basques, one an assumed Frenchman from Brittany, the brilliantly named Robin Le Normand, who sounds like a mythical warrior-hero of the Battle of Hastings.

For Paris Mbappé was back, as he was always going to be, recovered from a bruised ankle. And as ever Mbappé, or rather his extended ongoing farewell, remains the key story around here, and an issue of some macroeconomic urgency for French football. Should the incumbent Sun King finally decide to join Real Madrid this summer Ligue 1 will lose its biggest and indeed only remaining global star, with a 2024-29 TV rights deal yet to be auctioned off.

It took 35 seconds for Real Sociedad to steal the ball high up the field and four more for André Silva to curl their first shot just wide. Those early moments had the feeling at times of a Western saloon bar brawl deep in the Paris half, as the visitors pressed fearlessly in packs, feeding their own strengths but in the process leaving a reckless amount of space behind.

Mbappé really should have scored with five minutes gone after an unencumbered thrust through the middle, out there gliding away into his own private patch of green and shooting low but too close to Alex Remiro.

Still that wild press continued to bump and jounce and harry the Paris midfield. Takefusa Kubo and Merino combined to set up André Silva for a header that looped just past the post. It seemed transgressive at times. Are you really allowed to enjoy playing these games?

As Paris began, steadily, to assert their more orderly possession game Le Normand was booked for hacking down Dembélé as he glided past two white shirts towards an undermanned edge of the penalty area.

On the Real Sociedad right Kubo was a threat throughout, a lovely, easy, mischievous dribbler, and another footballer who appears to have decided this high-tension theatre of pain is actually, in the end, a bit of a lark.

Imanol Alguacil’s team stuck to the same pattern at the start of the second half. Press high. Leave three against three at the back. Hope Mbappé and Dembélé aren’t actually as deadly as they look in the clips. Still the suspicion began to grow as half chances came and went that they really were going to have to make all this energy pay given the threat at the other end.

And so it came to pass as Paris took the lead from a corner with 57 minutes gone. Dembélé took it, Marquinhos flicked it on and Mbappé hooked the ball in cleverly at the back post, too quick and too agile for the white-shirted cover.

Paris were humming now, Vitinha spinning into space and finding his passing angles. Mbappé grazed the bar with a right footed shot from 25 yards. And on 70 minutes it was 2-0. The goal was made by a swift diagonal break from left to right, and scored by Bradley Barcola, who took the ball on the far touchline, veered inside, found the space opening up and tucked the ball under Remiro as he came sprawling out of his goal. Not for the first time La Real’s defensive right side looked like a weakness.