Should Mauricio Pochettino indulge the mercurial Brazilian in the perennial chokers’ quarter-final against Bayern Munich?
The same procedure as last year? The same procedure as every year. But for how long? At some point, Paris Saint-Germain will win the Champions League and the world will be able to stop wondering if this could finally be their season. And so we go through the familiar rigmarole and ask, could this be it? Could the stars have aligned at last? Could PSG finally have found the right balance of coach and stellar players?
Certainly the 4-1 victory at Barcelona in the last 16, arguably their best performance in the Champions League, suggested they could. At which point the caveats immediately kick in. This is PSG, a club who have made a habit of freezing at key moments. This is PSG, who have won seven of the last eight French league titles and done four trebles in the past six years, who are unused to being challenged domestically and so tend to buckle under pressure in Europe (it may be that the battle at the top of Ligue 1 this season helps them). This is PSG, a byword for extravagance and excess.
Related: New-look Champions League is a pointless waste of time that will destroy the drama | Jonathan Wilson
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