DI MARIA ENJOYS HIS FREEDOM IN PARIS:
WHEN the decisive opportunity came, Angel di Maria executed the pass perfectly, as he had done for most of the evening. A dink with his left foot, the ball floated beautifully into the path of Edinson Cavani and Chelsea, for now, were sunk.
Assists like that are worth a celebration and Di Maria’s was simple. Both arms raised to the sky, it carried the mark of a footballer finally convinced that he has arrived back at the right end of the European game.
Prior to last night, Di Maria had done his best to exorcise the demons of a miserable, failed year at Manchester United with a smattering of goals — nine — and assists in the French league. But this is a league that PSG are leading by such a margin — 24 points — that they can barely be seen by Monaco in second.
It’s certainly very nice scoring against Guingamp, Rennes and Caen but what does it actually prove?
His contribution last night was another thing entirely. This was a big moment, a big goal, a moment to change a team’s season.
Had they drawn this game, PSG would have headed to London on March 9 with an awful lot to prove, with the suggestion that maybe, for all their expensive recruitment, they remained little more than domestic bullies, a team good enough only for punishing the weak.
One goal has changed that, though. Now they look — and will feel — like a proper team and Di Maria once again looks like a proper player.
Certainly it has been a while. Di Maria suffered more than anyone from the drudgery of Louis van Gaal’s tactics during the Dutch coach’s sterile first season at Old Trafford. Only briefly did he benefit from the manager’s trust in England. Once he, like everyone else, had been dragged backwards into Van Gaal’s robotic, rigid caution, his spirit drained away.
Di Maria is not free from blame for his troubles in the Barclays Premier League. He could have done more, could have been more mentally robust.
In Paris, though, the Argentinian wide forward has rediscovered the confidence, freedom and sense of worth that characterised his play when he thrived as the ‘other’ free-running forward at Real Madrid.
STATIONED initially on the right side of Laurent Blanc’s 4-3-3 formation last night, what was immediately apparent was the freedom afforded by the system to a player who, from his early days at Benfica, has always looked at his happiest with the ball at his feet and open field in front of him.
Indeed, despite a couple of early, eyecatching flicks and a terrific defencesplitting pass through to Lucas Moura in the first half, Di Maria’s influence on the game grew as he began to drift across the top of his team’s formation throughout the second period.
Great players don’t wait for opportunities to come their way in tight games, they go looking for them. This is how it was for Di Maria here as he sought, and found, the space from which he could profoundly and definitively affect the outcome of this contest.
Chelsea worked like Trojans all night and almost got there. A scoring draw would have been some result, given their fitness issues. Ultimately, though, they couldn’t say that Di Maria hadn’t served fair warning of what was coming.
Twice just before the hour, Di Maria drifted into the inside left channel to play perfect balls inside Cesar Azpilicueta for the overlapping Maxwell. They were stand-out moments. It is one thing to see such opportunities unfold in your mind, quite another to play a pass of perfect weight.
There had been two devilish shots from distance too, both saved by the increasingly important Chelsea goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois.
It was, however, the way that everything went forwards from Di Maria that was so notable. Every moment of possession was deemed an invitation to create. There weren’t many occasions that he carried that threat last year.
There will remain times when Blanc will need more from Di Maria. He will certainly never offer a coach the defensive contributions necessary when games are tight. At the death here, for
example, he turned away in exasperation when a Cavani pass didn’t reach him and, choosing to pull his socks up rather than chase a white shirt, he had hardly moved by the time Oscar had buried what could have been a game-changing shot in to the side-netting at the other end.
That is nitpicking, however. There were times last night when the locals simply breathed deep in anticipation when Di Maria (right) took the ball and got his head up.
That says much for a great player’s return, if not quite to eminence, then certainly to prominence.