There’s been a surprising amount of news that’s followed that simply incredible second leg match between Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain which resulted in Barca progressing in the Champions League despite losing the first leg 4-0.
Initially, after the game, I think every soccer fan globally was in both awe and shock. If you thought Barca were going to overcome the 4-0 deficit you sir or madame are a liar. There was no doubting that they were capable of scoring that many goals in a game but really there should have been no chance of a Barcelona comeback. But nevertheless, that happened. My first issue surrounding the aftermath of the game comes in the form of people left, right and center branding it the best comeback in soccer history. Don’t get me wrong it was truly incredible but this was a round of 16 games which for both of the two sides shouldn’t be considered a match of enormous magnitude. Therefore branding it the best comeback ever when there are sides that have come back from 3-0 down in the final of the Champions League I think it’s a bit over the top to claim that this was the best ever. Istanbul anyone?
The next occurrence is simply disgusting. Following on from their humiliating defeat the ttravelingPSG squad weren’t met by sympathetic fans back in Paris to say the least. There’s a vast multitude of videos online showing PSG players being fairly viciously approached and cars being damaged by furious fans as players looked to return home. Thankfully no one was harmed. To a certain extent you can understand the frustration of the fans but what especially gets to me is the lack of respect from fans for where the team currently is in world soccer. Only a matter of years ago Paris Saint Germain were a fairly mediocre mid table side in Ligue 1. Back then fans would be throwing parties to celebrate the fact that they’re even in a European competition. But now they’re physically attacking the squad because they got knocked out to Barcelona of all clubs. Disgusting.
To top it all off and summarise the soreness of PSG fans there’s now a widely supported petition to have the match replayed. The petition calling for the second leg to be replayed now has the support of over 200,000 signatures which surely have to be almost entirely PSG fans. The petition states that referee Deniz Aytekin’s poor performance in the match is enough of a reason to have the game scrapped and for it to take place a second time. So effectively the fans have had enough of attacking players and moved on to a more civil yet just as ridiculous approach of complaining about the ref. There’s no doubting that referee Aytekin didn’t have a very good game. Realistically PSG should have had a penalty and the penalty given to Barcelona for a foul on Luis Suarez was incredibly soft but at the end of the day the score was 6-1. In my opinion regardless of the referee’s decisions Barca completely outplayed PSG and so deserved to progress in the competition.
It seems that now more than ever, those associated with soccer fail to understand and accept the human error is and always will be part of the game. Sometimes it goes in your favour and sometimes it goes against you that’s simply how it is. Although hopefully in the near future the use of video referees will mean that the referee isn’t an option for an easy scapegoat. But for me blaming the referee and then creating a petition just shows that PSG fans have been really sore losers following the destruction of their team. Even the best teams around have to accept that sometimes they will fall from the top.
