Before finding PSG on Sunday for the first match of the Club World Cup, Diego Simeone admitted that the Luis Enrique team should have won during their last confrontation in November 2024.
Since November 2024, PSG has changed. And Diego Simeone knows it. If his team won 2-1 in the Parc des Princes in the Champions League League phase, the Atlético de Madrid coach acknowledged that the Parisians “deserved to win this match”.
“They had played better and obtained many goal opportunities. We have been decisive and made a huge collective effort. None of the two teams has changed much since that day,” said the Spanish technician during a press briefing organized at Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, theater of reunion. “They will continue on this momentum, with young players in the midfield, very good offensively, and a coach who worked very well wherever he went, instilling a strong conviction to his players. Luis proved it in all the teams, in selection, in Celta, not to mention Barça … He knows that he has a positive impact when we have the players he had, of course.”
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A historic season to complete
Seven months after this frustrating evening at the Parc des Princes, the Parisians have changed dimension. Halted with its status as European champion, PSG will have to tame the Californian furnace and want to mean again that it spent a milestone, on Sunday against Atlético Madrid. The “Colchoneros” had highlighted, on November 6, the naivety of a team that had not yet known an offensive click and allowed itself to be pierced at the slightest opportunity. Indeed, the Parisians, very dominating, had been punished with their ineffectiveness by a last minute goal on a against assassin orchestrated by Antoine Griezmann.
Paris has a status to honor, but above all the desire to conclude an already historic season (victories in Ligue 1, C1, Coupe de France, Champions Trophy) by a fifth title.
