Paris Saint-Germain enters another UEFA Champions League knockout stage. From 2020 to 2021, the Parisians reached the final and semi-final; however, the last two years have been filled with disappointment.
Furthermore, the disappointment is what many came to associate with PSG. They’d crash out in the Round of 16, often before 2020. After two years of advancing, the letdowns returned in 2022 and 2023 as the capital club fell to Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.
With disappointments occurring more often than not, Gianluigi Buffon, who played for PSG during the 2018-19 season, shared his thoughts on the issue.
He spoke during an interview given to the YouTube channel The BSMT by Gianluca Gazzoli about a potential explanation for PSG’s failures in the Champions League. According to him, it is absolutely not a squad issue.
“According to me, I saw players of an unimaginable quality,” Buffon said (h/t Paris Fans). “At Juventus, I thought we were the best in the world, then I saw all these players together in Paris: Neymar, Mbappé, Verratti, Marquinhos, and Thiago Silva… Mamma mia! If we had transferred them to Turin, we would have won the Champions League four times in a row.
“Every time, I wondered: ‘How come they don’t win the Champions League there?’ I thought it was incomprehensible, and then by living there all year round, I understood why…”
PSG will face Real Sociedad in the Champions League Round of 16, and it will attempt to end its current run of back-to-back eliminations.
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