Former Equipe de France and Paris Saint-Germain midfielder Jérôme Rothen spoke to RMC Sport after PSG’s 3-2 defeat by Aston Villa (video summary Aston Villa/PSG) at Villa Park on Tuesday in the return leg of the Champions League 2024-2025 quarter-finals (3-1 first leg, 4-5 aggregate). He spoke of the Parisians’ shortcomings.
Rothen “It would be too easy to dwell on the past and stick this label on a completely different group”.
“For me, it’s not a mental problem what happened. It would be too easy to dwell on the past and stick this label on a completely different group, apart from Marquinhos. And the start of the match proved PSG right. The first two attacks, the first two shots on target, resulted in two goals. Automatically, you’re a little slower on the run, you’re a little slower on the ball…
Rothen “The problem is slackness, and you can’t have that”.
After that, you start the second half a bit asleep. You leave a bit of space, you don’t get back into the game properly, you don’t get into the duels… Then you concede a goal and it’s one thing after another. The problem is slackness, and you can’t have that. It’s no more worrying than what happened, on the contrary. I think it’s a blessing in disguise, because they saw that they couldn’t do a bit less.”
Rothen isn’t quite right. Slackness is also a form of mental deficit. The Parisians had been able to refocus in previous games when they were starting to sink. This time, however, there was a mixture of panic and complacency. In the end, you have to learn from this bad match. We mustn’t do that again in the semi-final.
It’s a shame, because PSG were on a great run, but Luis Enrique had warned us that after the good weather, often comes the rain. No team stays on its cloud without a break. We’ll be waiting for reassurance in the first leg of the Champions League semi-finals.
