PARIS: Kylian Mbappe and a Lionel Messi in vintage form both scored twice as Paris Saint-Germain crushed Israel’s Maccabi Haifa 7-2 on Tuesday to secure a place in the last 16 of this season’s Champions League with one group game to spare.

Neymar was on target too, and the Brazilian also forced an own goal from Maccabi defender Sean Goldberg before Carlos Soler completed the rout as the Parisians netted seven times in a Champions League game for the first time since November 2017. The win means PSG have qualified from Group H along with Benfica, although it will go down to next week’s final matchday to decide who advances in first place and therefore benefits from a theoretically kinder draw in the next round. “It was a great evening. The team played fantastic football, between the defenders and midfielders and the three attackers, who were fantastic,” said PSG coach Christophe Galtier.“There was a great connection between them.”

Maccabi Haifa, who saw Senegalese defender Abdoulaye Seck score both of their goals, are eliminated along with Juventus but the Israeli champions could still pip the Italian giants to third place and Europa League football after the break for the World Cup. “I prefer to lose 7-2 than 4-0 playing bad football,” said Maccabi coach Barak Bakhar. “We were up against the best players in the world and they proved it tonight.”

The upcoming World Cup in Qatar is surely a factor in the outstanding early-season form of Messi and Neymar in particular, and along with Mbappe they turned on the style to leave Maccabi regularly looking dazed and confused in defense. Mbappe’s latest goals his fifth and sixth in this season’s Champions League taking him to 16 in all competitions came a day after reports emerged in France of the eye-watering details of his new contract at PSG. Newspaper Le Parisien reported on Monday that the Qatar-owned club were paying the France striker a total of €630 million ($627.8m) before tax over the duration of the three-year deal he signed in May. The net sum would be slightly less than half that amount, although PSG dismissed the reports as “sensationalist.”  

The figures reported are higher than the €555 million gross that Messi was reported by Spanish daily El Mundo to have earned over his final four years at Barcelona.

Published in The Daily National Courier, October, 27 2022

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