Good teams are unpredictable, great teams are unstoppable, and the best teams are a mix of both.
Paris Saint-Germain have been good, approaching great, in recent seasons, and are one step closer to the crowning glory of a Champions League title after beating Aston Villa 3-1 in Paris in the quarter-final first-leg.
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Last season, PSG needed Kylian Mbappe’s individual brilliance to gamebreak their way to the final four. They had struggled repeatedly for first-half goals. Now they are one game away from the same stage without Mbappe — and they owe this to their individual and tactical variety.
The three goals against Villa were all very different. Desire Doue levelled the tie with a screamer from the left edge of the box after PSG worked a short corner from the right all the way around.
At 19, signed from Rennes last summer, Doue (beyond being young and French) embodies the technical brilliance and positional flexibility that Luis Enrique is building this team on. Doue has 12 goals and 11 assists in all competitions in his debut season in the capital and is one of eight PSG players with 10-plus goal involvements.
Kvicha Kvaratskhelia, the winter signing from Napoli, put them ahead in the tie four minutes after the break. His finish, rifling past Emiliano Martinez at his near post, was fittingly clinical for the counter-attack that preceded it.
Doue celebrates his goal for PSG (Michael Steele/Getty Images)
Right-back Achraf Hakimi made an important interception as PSG were scrambling to regain defensive shape, then made a third-man run to ignite the break when Joao Neves passed forward to No 9 Ousmane Dembele. He set it back to Hakimi, and two passes later, Kvaratskhelia was driving at right-back Axel Disasi.
Disasi, who only came on at half-time because Matty Cash had struggled defensively and was booked after four first-half fouls, was turned in circles by the Georgia international, who went inside and then outside before scoring. This made it seven consecutive games in Europe where PSG have made at least one shot from a fast break (13 such shots and three goals in that run).
Dembele created the third, providing the through ball to release left-back Nuno Mendes in behind — a run that he and Hakimi had been making all evening. Villa had dropped into a back-five on occasions but were firmly in a 5-4-1 at this stage.
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Mendes’ run between Disasi and Ezri Konsa was perfectly timed, and he showed the composure which PSG have come to find in Europe this season. He chopped inside to take out the recovering Konsa and sit down Martinez, before passing into an empty net with his (non-dominant) right foot.
Luis Enrique embraced his coaching staff; Mendes pointed at Dembele and the pair wheeled off in celebration; PSG’s midfielders hugged each other on the halfway line.
It was a team goal, essential not just for the superior lead going into the second leg, but for passing the acid test that Villa’s stubborn, passive defensive block had presented all night. They had reduced PSG to needing moments of individual brilliance, and, when it really counted, PSG had the technical and tactical wherewithal to keep the ball, pull Villa left and right and then go through the middle to create their best chance of the game.
None of PSG’s first 27 shots were big chances. For all their territorial dominance, they never made anything close to the high-quality tap-in that Villa opened the scoring with.
Martinez was well tested, repeatedly pushing shots over, with the visitors struggling to string together the long passing sequences that were needed to take the sting out of the game (one in every four Villa passes was incomplete), and suffering waves of PSG attacks. Luis Enrique was thrilled that PSG “forced” Villa to pass longer than they normally do.
There are absolutely recent iterations of PSG in recent seasons — perhaps even earlier this campaign — that would have crumbled when Morgan Rogers made it 1-0 to Villa and a comeback was required. Not this PSG.
Like they did at home to Manchester City, and similar to how they responded at Anfield after a 1-0 first-leg defeat against Liverpool, PSG stuck to the style not out of principle, but because it works for them. “We’ve become specialists in overcoming negative situations,” Luis Enrique said afterwards. “It’s happened to us before, and the team always plays the same way to overcome problems”.
3 – PSG have now beaten Manchester City, Liverpool and Aston Villa this season, the fourth time a team has beaten three Premier League sides in the same UEFA Champions League campaign after Bayern Munich in 2013-14, Barcelona in 2018-19 and Real Madrid in 2021-22. Harvest. pic.twitter.com/tVTCajPSrf
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) April 9, 2025
They kept the relentless press going, with a slight tweak from their usual man-to-man scheme to a shape which resembled a 3-2-4-1 against Villa’s 4-4-2 build-up, which featured a box midfield.
Dembele had to lead the press on his own, with PSG trying to lock Villa in one side, keeping an extra defender back to defend against the long-ball threat to Marcus Rashford and retain sufficient midfield support against Villa’s three No 10s.
Kvaratskhelia scores against Villa on Wednesday night (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
The goal was the only chance Villa made in transition, all the more impressive for PSG, given the vertical attacking qualities they were facing, especially without suspended club captain Marquinhos. Stand-in centre-back Lucas Beraldo, 21, brought enough physicality to shut Rashford down, even if he was often isolated as PSG committed full-backs forwards on both sides.
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Luis Enrique was asked pre-match if Hakimi’s positional aggressiveness would be problematic in leaving Rashford space to exploit. He insisted that “it’s not about a single player positioning higher or lower” but accepted that it would “require excellent defensive skills from us”.
Collectively, they made the first contact at 60 per cent of Villa’s long passes, and when the second balls did drop, at least one of their midfield trio were there to pick up the pieces and sustain attacks. There was one instance in the second half where Rashford was released down the left and Hakimi doubled up with Beraldo to overload the winger and dispossess him.
PSG made plenty of these two-v-ones, including early in the first-half when John McGinn was the only Villa midfielder brave enough to take the ball on the half-turn through midfield. Vitinha and Joao Neves pounced and the latter fouled him.
Most importantly, PSG take a 3-1 lead to Villa Park, only their fourth two-goal lead from a Champions League’s first leg in the past five seasons. They achieved that without first-choice winger Bradley Barcola starting, without their club captain and without their No 9 scoring, showing all the different sides to their game across 90 minutes.
(Top photo: Lars Baron – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
This news was originally published on this post .
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