The psg It has become one of the most watched clubs in the world of football, based on its financial strength.

Since Qatar Sports Investments, the Qatar Sovereign Investment Fund, joined the club in mid-2011, the Paris Saint Germain won French Ligue 1 eight times but He still hasn’t achieved his great goal, to be crowned king of Europesomething that only Olympique Marseille in 1993 achieved as a representative of French football.

The Champions League is very elusive to PSG, no matter how many stars they have in each market: they could not even go far in the 2021-2022 edition with Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe and Neymar, the best attacking trio in the world. And in the 2022-2023 season he is still in the race, but his path looks complicated.

The Parisian side came out of the group stage unbeaten but on goal difference they were left as Benfica’s guards and the draw gave them a Bravísimo passing the round of 16 against Bayern Munich, the German champion. And Bape, PSG’s top scorer in recent seasons, he will not be able to be in the first leg who will play in France due to a muscle injury.

The French striker he will have time to get in shape for the second leg And PSG aren’t the only ones affected by injuries, with Bayern Munich, for example, set to be without goalkeeper Manuel Neuer for the rest of the season, but for the Parisians, without a doubt, the physical problems are already marking a blow.

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PSG’s incredible injury curse in the Champions League

In all the years that PSG have been a financial superpower, they have only just arrived Champions League final: that of the informal era 2020, interrupted by COVID-19 and defined by one-game neutral-field series. It was precisely that year that PSG did not face many injury problems and Mbappé, Neymar, Ángel Di María, Marquinhos and Thiago Silva, among others, led him to Defeated in the final by Bayern Munich 1-0.

In the rest of the dismissals, PSG were never 100%. And almost all of them made it to the round of 16, too early for such a strong team.

Since he bought Neymar in mid-2017 For 222 million euros, the funds of this curse do not stop being generated for the French club.

In March 2018, neymar he was unable to play the second match against him Real Madrid due to injury and lost 2-1, with no chance of overturning the 3-1 defeat suffered in Madrid.

In March 2019PSG were clear favorites to progress to the round after their 2-0 win Manchester United in England in the first leg, he succeeded without Neymar and without Edinson Cavani, is still the all-time leading scorer. But the Brazilian did not recover for the second leg, with Cavani barely making it late as PSG lost 3-1 in France when they conceded a late goal and were eliminated.

After the 2020 final, PSG started an excellent campaign 2021 excluding Barcelona (without say mary on the road, without neymar in both matches) and Bayern Munich, but babe arrived badly decimated in the semi-finals in April and before the City of Manchester he went unnoticed in the first leg and was unable to play in the second leg. The French were eliminated.

In 2022already with Messi in the team, PSG experienced another comeback: they won 1-0 against the opposition Real Madrid at home, but only after a goal by Bape in the 90+4th minute of a match in which a neymar who arrived injured played only 20 minutes. The one who wasn’t there due to injury in the first leg, but also in the second leg, was Sergio Ramos, specialist in winning the Champions League. Ney recovered for the second leg three weeks later, but Real Madrid pulled off an epic three-goal second-half triumph to advance to the round.

The case of Neymar is the most emblematic in this matter of relegations in the Champions League: after playing for PSG, the Brazilian he lost 5 of his team’s 17 games in the final phase and in another he had to start as a substitute because he wasn’t there for 90 minutes.