PSG 1-0 Girona: Paris dominates and wins in extremis (Champions League)

This second Champions League evening of the week held a few surprises. Paris-Saint Germain had a hard time scoring a goal at the Parc des Princes to beat last season's surprise Spanish team, Girona. While Manchester City was held to a 0-0 draw at home by Inter Milan. Borussia Dortmund got away with it in Bruges (0-3).

Some will speak of a miraculous victory as it was shaped at the very end of the match, others will consider that Paris largely deserved its 3 points. Two possible readings of this first match of the new Champions League format.

Largely dominating in terms of goal-scoring opportunities, 22 against 3 for the Spaniards, Luis Enrique's Parisians sometimes lacked rhythm, sometimes success (like Bradley Barcola and Ousmane Dembélé), sometimes a surface attacker (Asensio also went off injured before the break).

When you have fantastic dribblers, and they are the wingers of Paris-SG, you know that finding them on a bad night is a possibility. Dribbling is not an exact science. Nothing really went right for the two buddies on Wednesday night against Girona. Missed dribbles, shots stopped by the opposing goalkeeper or by the crossbar, a very poorly managed counterattack in the 54th minute of play...

Instead of moving slightly off-centre to then shift his teammate, Ousmane Dembélé charges into the middle and gets tangled up only to be caught without even having shot on goal... Infuriating.

In the game, Paris continues to show an interesting face, even if the Champions League opposition shows that Ligue 1, once again, does not help it to calibrate itself each weekend.

As the game entered stoppage time, it finally took a gross handling error from Gazzaniga, the Argentinian goalkeeper from Girona, following a tight cross from Nuno Mendes to deliver the Parc des Princes (1-0, 90th). Paris takes the three points. That's the main thing in this new european championship where qualifying places directly for the 8th finals will be expensive.

After Lille, beaten by Sporting Portugal (2-0) on Tuesday, and PSG on Wednesday evening, it is Monaco's turn, against FC Barcelona (Thursday, 21 p.m.) and in Brest, in Guingamp against Sturm Graz (18:45 p.m.) to enter the competition this evening.