Paris: Kylian Mbappe will miss Paris Saint-Germain after Borussia Dortmund crashed out of the Champions League yesterday, ruling out his final game for the club in next month’s final at Wembley.
The 2018 World Cup winner will leave PSG after seven years when his contract expires at the end of this season, with Real Madrid his next destination.
He hopes to sign the Qatari-owned club to Champions League glory for the first time in its history and is the favorite to see Dortmund at the Parc des Princes in the second leg of the semi-final.
But they couldn’t overcome a one-goal first-leg deficit, with Mats Hummels scoring the only goal of the night to give Dortmund a 2-0 victory.
Mbappe was one of four PSG players to hit the woodwork in the second half and coach Luis Enrique said his side, who have attempted 31 goals, were “lucky”.
“If you are good, you don’t hit the record, you enter. I tried to do my best. When I said to be more clinical, I should enter. But we have to take this life,” he said.
It will be difficult for PSB to do so, given how close they are to reaching their second final in four years after losing to Bayern Munich in Lisbon.
Mbappé will always be remembered as the top scorer with 255 goals when he went to the European Cup with his hometown team.
A total of 42 of them have appeared in Europe’s elite club competition, but failed to add between the two legs against Dortmund.
“The end of the dream,” was the headline in the sports daily L’Equipe, which gave a scathing assessment of the French captain’s performance, giving it two out of 10 marks.
Another European disaster?
Relegation by the Bundesliga’s fifth-placed team is likely to be a disaster for a club that has invested heavily in PSG since the Qatari took over in 2011.
It was the latest in a series of huge upsets in the knockout stages of the Champions League in 2017 when Barcelona were thumped 6-1 in the last 16 after winning the first leg 4-0.
“PSG hit the glass ceiling on a night when it seemed the sky was the limit,” said L’Equipe’s Vincent Duluc. “The reality is that this elimination is a complete collapse, given the potential it offers.”
However, the truth is that the PSB team has not been quite as expected so far despite the presence of Mbappe.
Following the departure of Lionel Messi and Neymar, the squad was reshuffled earlier this season and Luis Enrique was brought in to oversee the new project.
“My goal when I arrived was to compete as much as possible for every trophy,” the Spanish coach said on Tuesday. His team has already won Ligue 1 and Mbappe’s last game was the French Cup final against Lyon on May 25.
