Paris Saint Germain is the second most valuable club in the world (after Manchester City) currently worth 117 billion Ksh. They have world stars like Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappe. They have 9 Ligue 1 titles (7 since 2012), they play regularly in the Champions League and they are currently first in France, with a 13 points advantage. But still, they are not playing well. Many of those 5 draws and 18 wins came in the last minute or in the last 15 minutes. They are not always dominating, as expected. And when they lose their only second game so far, their main problem is – the referee. (1.37) CHELSEA (5.10) LILLE (10.0)After Nantes made a sensation and won against PSG 3-1 (3-0 at halftime), all people could hear from the Parisians was complaining about referee’s decisions. After Marco Verratti spoke at the end of the game and told „We got sh*t on by the referees!” it was time for the sporting director to come out and speak about the ’man in black’. „Appiah did not receive a second yellow even though the penalty was awarded. A second yellow card is a red, it’s obvious. Then you have so many fouls on our players. But he says no, it’s Mbappé, it’s Neymar, I won’t blow the whistle! It’s Messi, I won’t blow the whistle, it’s Paris Saint-Germain, I won’t blow the whistle!” That’s where the feeling comes from. Maybe I am getting it wrong. We lost, I accept the defeat. We’ll learn from it. There were a lot of mistakes, things that we didn’t do well. We have to know how to behave in Ligue 1 in a certain way following a Champions League match. We’re going to talk about that. But with the referee, we had the impression today that it was like, “bang, bang, bang, I’m shooting you“. Every match is different. It was an important game against Nantes, we know that. But this thing was created where everything is against us. I am speaking about refereing moments which were clear“ Leonardo told L’Équipe. Verratti’s x-rated rant after the unlikely Parisian humiliation: The refs sh*t on us!And coach Mauricio Pochettino tried do defend his boss and his player and even started with that famous „We didn’t lose because of the referee, but…“ sentence. How cliche. „We have to separate things and not lay the blame on the referee. We didn’t lose because of the referee, although it did play a part. The criteria was not the same for the two teams, they weren’t judged in the same way and because of that I can understand the director’s and the players’ anger. We did some good things, even some very good things offensively, but we didn’t manage to counter them defensively, and there were a lot of accidents in the match. Neymar, Mbappe and Messi produced well, it’s a shame we couldn’t control the other facet, defensive vigilance” said Pochettino.
