Neymar ready to deliver for PSG on biggest stage; Di Maria feeling good vibes on ‘home’ ground

Paris Saint-Germain’s fortunes in the Champions League in recent years have been inextricably linked to those of Neymar, even before they bought the Brazilian for a world record fee, and if he maintains his recent form in Sunday’s final it may make the difference against formidable Bayern Munich.

At 28, Neymar is desperate to get his hands on another Champions League winner’s medal, five years after he won the competition with Barcelona. PSG and Bayern will lock horns in Champions League final, which will kick off at 11 pm (UAE time).

If he can play the starring role in a PSG victory — while Cristiano Ronaldo’s Juventus were absent altogether from the ‘Final Eight’ and Lionel Messi and Barcelona went home in disarray — he will perhaps be accepted as the best player in the world, even with no Ballon d’Or in this pandemic year.

And for PSG, it would validate their decision to pay 222 million euros ($264 million) to take him from Barcelona three years ago, after his first two seasons in the French capital were overshadowed by injury and constant reports that he was unsettled.

When Paris signed him in August 2017, they were still reeling in the wake of their spectacular Champions League exit against Barcelona a few months earlier.

After a stunning 4-0 win in the first leg of that last-16 tie, PSG collapsed in the return at the Camp Nou. Barcelona scored three times after the 88th minute, with Neymar hitting two of them, as Barcelona won 6-1. PSG went out, humiliated.

It was not the first time PSG had been stung by Neymar -- when the sides met in the quarter-finals in 2015, he scored the first goal as Barca won 3-1 in France and then scored both in a 2-0 second-leg win.

But Neymar’s first two years at the Parc des Princes were one long melodrama.

Fast forward to 2019 and a new foot injury forced him to miss both legs of the last-16 defeat by Manchester United.

PSG lost on away goals after conceding a late penalty at home in the second leg. Neymar, watching on, took to Instagram to insult the referee and received a three-match ban.

He did not appear again in a Champions League game for PSG until a 2-2 draw against Real last November. By which time he had accepted his situation and knuckled down.

Now he is central to everything PSG are doing. He is happy too, especially alongside Kylian Mbappe.

“We are more or less the same age and we have a laugh together off the pitch. We hit it off straight away,” says Mbappe, who is 21.

“We respect each other, we have a lot of fun. We are also less focused on ourselves now and more worried about the other guys around us, because we understand that we need everyone else to be able to win. We can’t do it with just the two of us.”

Neymar scored in both legs against Borussia Dortmund in the last 16 and cried afterwards. He was excellent against Atalanta in the quarter-finals and magnificent against RB Leipzig in the semi-finals, even if he did not score in either game.

PSG will hope Neymar -- who has scored 70 times altogether in 84 matches for them -- has been saving his next goal for the final.

“I hope that the good lord will help him to score on Sunday and us to win,” said his compatriot Thiago Silva.

Meanwhile, if any player has felt perfectly at home during the unique circumstances surrounding the climax to this year’s Champions League, it is PSG’s Argentine winger Angel Di Maria.

As soon as UEFA decided that Portuguese capital Lisbon would host the quarter-finals onwards in a mini-tournament, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Di Maria felt good vibes.

After PSG scrambled past Atalanta in a dramatic comeback, the 32-year-old was then instrumental as the Parisians outclassed RB Leipzig in the semi-finals to set up a meeting with Bayern Munich at the home of Benfica on Sunday.

It is the ground at which Di Maria played for three seasons while with the Portuguese club and the one which he returned to in 2014 to help inspire Real Madrid to an emphatic victory in the Champions League final against Atletico Madrid.

Di Maria was man of the match in that clash and now has the perfect stage to help PSG realise their ambition of winning Europe’s most-coveted club crown for the first time.

“When they changed the venue to Lisbon, I had a strange feeling in my body that reminded me of the old times when I lived here for three years and how happy I was in Lisbon during those years,” Di Maria told UEFA’s website.

Agencies