While all of the reasons to be morally opposed to the Paris Saint-Germain sportswashing project still apply, it must be said that the team as presently constituted is exceptionally cool.
This certainly isn't the first great team of PSG's Qatar era, and even after Wednesday's 3-1 home win over Aston Villa, which has the Parisiens on the precipice of the Champions League semifinals, there's still a ways to go before it can match or possibly improve on that 2020 UCL final in terms of coming closest to finally delivering the prize its Qatari overlords have so rapaciously coveted. Almost every previous iteration of PSG has been distasteful for a variety of reasons: the chintzy Galácticos cosplay, the market-warping signings of Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, the jealousy with which they've guarded their golden-caged prisoners, the flaunting of their riches and the simultaneous anger when anyone brings up the grossness of how those riches came about, the self-righteous whining about the schadenfreude their habitual humiliations inspire in the rest of the soccer world. Nevertheless, the current team is surprisingly hard to hate.
The club's roster is loaded with several of the most promising young talents in Europe. The players are not only good, but also wildly entertaining. Their efforts to express themselves on the pitch are aided by manager Luis Enrique's intricate but remarkably fluid playing system, which empowers the players to direct the game themselves. Ousmane Dembélé is having the season of his life. Vitinha and João Neves form the continent's most formidable midfield duo this side of Barcelona. Nuno Mendes and Achraf Hakimi form the kind of attack-minded full back tandem you typically only see in old highlights of the Brazil national team. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia joined the party in January, and, as you could've imagined, has pumped up the volume even further. I mean, this team lost the best player in the world in the offseason and has somehow gotten better and way more fun.
Of all the exciting players in Paris, though, I think my personal favorite this season has been Désiré Doué. This is maybe no surprise. Like so many of his fellow Zoomer superstars, Doué is an avowed Neymar stan. As a Neymar obsessive myself, I am naturally drawn to this budding crop of players who grew up as awed and inspired by the Brazilian's technical excellence and unbridled creativity as I was—the big difference between those guys and me being their ability to recreate Neymar's wonders outside of REM sleep. Spend just a couple minutes watching Doué and you can immediately spot the parts of his game he crafted in the image of his idol. Principally, it's there in the way he moves with the ball. So many of the 19-year-old Frenchman's techniques and gestures are straight out of Neymar's repertoire. As Ligue 1 put it in a video that those buttheads won't let me embed, "The RESEMBLANCE is striking!"
Arguably even more than the dramatic controls, the carrying style that makes the ball look like it's stuck to his foot via magnet, and the filigrees that adorn his dribbles, what is most redolent of Neymar is Doué's approach to the game—specifically, his irrepressible personality, his fearlessness when imposing that personality on a match, and his insatiable drive to take on any and all defenders. Though the art of dribbling is one of evasion and escape, Doué is one of those dribblers who is more often the hunter than the hunted. He's always looking to take the ball into the most difficult places and scenarios on the pitch, knowing that it's in those situations where his skills can cause the most damage. And woe to any defender who finds themselves in a 1-v-1 situation with him, where he becomes a shark luring his prey into open water.
Despite going down a goal on Wednesday through a Morgan Rogers strike in the 35th minute, PSG never evinced any panic or doubt about its ultimate fate. This calm assurance permeates the French team, and is embodied by no single player more than Doué. Alongside Kvaratskhelia, Doué was PSG's best player against Aston Villa, combining all his carefully honed Neymarisms in attack with his distinctive defensive work rate. Another Doué original? His outrageously consistent, freakishly powerful ball-striking, which just four minutes after Rogers's goal quite literally blasted PSG back level. The accuracy and oomph on this off-balance, quick-trigger shot is flat out nutty:
One of my most cherished soccer memories involves PSG sitting on a seemingly insurmountable first-leg Champions League lead only to gag it up in gloriously embarrassing fashion, so I will neither count out Villa's chances of turning things around back in Birmingham nor will I renounce my right to laugh my ass off should that comeback come about. Still, PSG has been one of the sensations of the season, and I have to admit that it has been awesome watching all those guys play some of the most thrilling soccer of the year. The prospect of a PSG vs. Barça UCL final, pitting one teenaged Neymar disciple against another, is downright drool-worthy. Even if I can't bring myself to actively root for it, for once the prospect of PSG winning the Champions League isn't something I'd actively dread. That's thanks to PSG's undeniably cool players like Doué, who as always, for good and for ill, have proven themselves better than the people footing the bill.
