After years of failing to satisfy their billing in Europe, Paris Saint-Germain are within an hour and a half of the Champions League last gratitude to their dramatic success over Atalanta on Wednesday, and mentor Thomas Tuchel now knows “everything is possible” for his team.
PSG were nearly another frustrating Champions League exit as they followed Atalanta 1-0 into the 90th minute in Lisbon, where all the last stages are being played after the long coronavirus shutdown.
In any case, Mario Pasalic’s 27th-minute strike for the Italians was at long last cancelled out by Marquinhos, who scrambled in a last-gasp leveler.
At that point, three minutes into injury time, Kylian Mbappe set up individual substitute Eric Choupo-Moting to change over the securing objective.
“The goals came very late but we deserved the victory. We never stopped believing or attacking,” said Tuchel, whose team will face Atletico Madrid or RB Leipzig in the semi-final, the club’s first since 1995.
“The boys who came off the bench had a big impact. We deserved it, we made our own luck.”
The cash blasted through the French champions by their Qatari proprietors has pressed PSG to convey and losing to Atalanta would have welcomed more analysis of a club whose ongoing record in such games has been poor.
All things considered, Atalanta’s whole pay bill is accepted to be proportionate to what PSG pay Neymar every year (around 36 million euros, or $42.5m).
Missing from decisive Champions League games in the last two seasons as a result of wounds, Neymar was magnificent here, never surrendering. He set up the equalizer and had an influence in the victor.
“Going home never crossed my mind,” said the world’s most expensive player.
Mbappe was just fit enough to play the last half-hour, after a spell uninvolved with a lower leg injury, yet his pace down the left flank had Atalanta on the back foot in the end stages and he laid on the champ.
