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PSG sharpen the knife ahead of Champions League clash with Chelsea

By on February 15, 2016

“It’s never easy,” said Paris Saint-Germian midfielder Marco Veratti, per The Guardian. “We can’t say we are going to win the Champions League.”

With hundreds of millions of Euros poured into the Parisian club over the last few years, they would know well how difficult it is to achieve their goal of winning the Champions League. They’ve been knocked out at the Quarterfinal stage for three years running, twice by Barcelona and twice on away goals.

Yet Veratti also described a quiet confidence around the Parc des Princes that this may be their year. “We’ve been playing with each other for three or four years now, we know each other better and the coach knows us better. So, this year, we are a better, stronger team. We’ve been winning lots of games in the league and we have arrived here in perfect conditions, clear by a safe distance in the league. We’ve been preparing for this game for a long time.”

PSG head into their Round of 16 tie against Chelsea tomorrow with a healthy, insurmountable twenty-four point lead in the Ligue 1 table. With the league already a foregone conclusion, they’re focusing all their efforts on the Champions League.

Zlatan Ibrahimovic has been on peak form this season, bagging twenty-one league goals so far, more than he did in the entirety of last season. Although he’s already thirty-four, he is still the spearhead of PSG’s attack. His contract with the club ends this summer and although he has preserved incredibly his talent this long, this is possibly PSG’s final shot to mount a serious bid for the Champions League title with this current generation of stars.

Zlatan has combined with Edinson Cavani, twenty-nine, and Angel di Maria, who has showcased virtuosity even beyond his best Real Madrid days. He has bagged eight goals, including two in an incredible display against Angers.

PSG’s front-line have scored twenty-four more goals than anybody else in the league, and they’ve also allowed just twelve in twenty-six matches so far this season. David Luiz, twenty-eight, and Thiago Silva, thirty-one, lead their back-line and there is no doubt that the team is collectively at the height of its ability. Laurent Blanc’s men have gone unbeaten in forty-four domestic games and the time to launch an offensive on Europe’s elite has come.

They’ve got an excellent opportunity tomorrow to advance against a Chelsea side still recuperating from Jose Mourinho’s vexed exit. The Blues have rarely been more vulnerable in Europe, and PSG have been sharpening the knife for years for this very moment.

Homepage photo credit: Doha Stadium Plus Qatar from Doha, Qatar (Zlatan Ibrahimovic) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

About Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan, founder of Football Every Day, lives and breaths football from the West Coast of the United States in California. Aside from founding Football Every Day in January of 2013, Alex has also launched his own journalism career and hopes to help others do the same with FBED. He covers the San Jose Earthquakes as a beat reporter for QuakesTalk.com and his work has also been featured in the BBC's Match of the Day Magazine.