PSG Will Not ‘Park The Bus’ Against Chelsea FC

Mandatory Credit: Paul Frederiksen-USA TODAY Sports

PSG boss Laurent Blanc was asked about his team’s tactics going in to the second leg of the Champions League quarterfinal tie against Chelsea FC at Stamford Bridge. Blanc responded by warning Chelsea that PSG will not “park the bus” despite having a two goal cushion. He continued by saying that PSG’s “best approach is to create chances” and that he does not want Chelsea “dictating the game”. The irony in his statement is that teams that park the bus are precisely the type that Chelsea have struggled against this season. They routinely beat top class teams who are looking for goals and struggle against teams like West Brom, West Ham, and most recently Crystal Palace who took an extremely defensive approach to the game.

Laurent Blanc’s comments at his press conference:

"“We are leading after the first leg, so we have to be the favourites. But we’ve not come here to let Chelsea dominate us and make us suffer… If you have seen, us, though, you will know our philosophy is that we like to keep the ball and pose problems. But if we want to be a top European side we have to be able to put this into practice away as well as at home. We believe in certain things. Taking the game to the opposition is the best way to win trophies. I think we’ll have some issues in the first 20 minutes tomorrow, when they’ll be very aggressive and try and score, so we’ll have to be calm and counter-act Chelsea’s play. But we will try and impose our philosophy as often as we can, and it would be wonderful to progress playing this way.”"

Blanc is right in saying that PSG’s best approach is to create chances because of the wealth of attacking talent at their disposal even with Zlatan Ibrahimovic out with injury. Players like Ezequiel Lavezzi and Javier Pastore are nightmares to defend as they showed last week and that is not even including Lucas Moura or Edinson Cavani. PSG is solid in defense but in no way is it their strong suit. They will indeed come to Stamford Bridge as favorites courtesy of their two goal lead but they are not foolish enough to believe that this tie is even close to over.

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