Messi, Neymar and Mbappé leave side playing almost 4-3-0-3. It earned a win against
Manchester City but may not always work
Lionel Messi scored a brilliant goal. Gianluigi Donnarumma kept a clean sheet.
Paris Saint-Germain won, easing immediately any sense of unease that might have been threatening to develop after the opening-week draw against Club Brugge. All is well for Mauricio Pochettino and Nasser al-Khelaifi. The crowd at Parc des Princes can relax, take their celebratory selfies and send whatever gleeful WhatsApps they like. Perhaps this will, at last, be their season.
And yet, comfortable as Tuesday’s win over Manchester City ultimately was, fitting as it was that Messi should get off the mark for his new club with a strike of that nature against a fellow petroclub, the one managed by the coach with whom he twice won the
Champions League, there must still be concerns.