Manchester City came away victorious against Paris Saint-Germain comfortably by 2-1 in a crucial Champions League group stage encounter.
Pep Guardiola’s side displayed an impressive performance against a star-studded PSG team. The host looked comfortable with the ball and created quite a few chances to go ahead before the interval but the Citizens could not convert those opportunities.
Meanwhile, Mauricio Pochettino’s side led the game against the run of play from a threatening counter-attack and Lionel Messi’s cross was excellently scored by Kylian Mbappe. However, the story of the game remained the same and the home side continued to display an exciting display and in the end, turned the game around by scoring two goals thanks to the goals from Raheem Sterling and second-half substitute Gabriel Jesus.
Manchester City 2-1 Paris Saint-Germain:
Following this result, Manchester City has qualified for the knock-out stage of the Champions League as a group leader and on the other hand, Paris Saint-Germain has qualified to the round of 16 stages as a runner up in the group after Leipzig thrashed Club Brugge in the other game.
Meanwhile, after registering his name on the scoresheet, Raheem Sterling has now extended his goal tally in the Champions League up to 23. The other two Englishman who has scored more than Manchester City winger are Wayne Rooney with 30 and Paul Scholes with 24.
After the game speaking on the club’s website, Pep Guardiola expressed his joy about his team’s performance and said:
“PSG, what a team, what players, what could I say? The performance was quite similar to Paris a month ago. Today we created more chances in the first half. We pressed really well in Paris and we adjusted because we learnt what we do. They decided not to play with Di Maria, but they are so dangerous. They have good players so you can lose a game like this. The quality they have…we did so well. The Team was aggressive without the ball. We defended well. We did it. The team played really well. In football the results are random. Nobody knows what will happen.
“What gives you consistency is how you perform and the way we are performing is really good. The people enjoy watching and hopefully we can sustain this for as long as possible. The players come back from injury and hopefully help us do it. They have a lot of quality, we tried to defend away from our goal because they can do anything. Except for the five minutes after our goal when they counter-attacked but could not finish because Ruben defended really well, so I say congratulations to everyone at our Club. We are into last 16 and will try our best in February to go to quarter-finals.”
The upcoming fixtures for both teams:
Manchester City will welcome West Ham United in their next game on Sunday in the Premier League and Paris Saint-Germain will travel to Saint-Etienne on the same day in Ligue1.
