SPORT: Football
Mauricio Pochettino is facing sacking after the PSG side were knocked out of the Champions League by Real Madrid.

Mauri­cio Pochet­ti­no is fac­ing sack­ing from Paris Saint-Ger­main after over­see­ing their Cham­pi­ons League sur­ren­der to Real Madrid.

Le Parisien in France said Pochet­ti­no and the French club’s sport­ing direc­tor Leonar­do would both pay the price for the loss, which came cour­tesy of a stun­ning 17-minute hat-trick from Karim Benzema.

“The present is all I can han­dle,” the man­ag­er said under fire after the 3–1 loss saw them crash out of Europe.

“As for the future, what will be will be. We play to com­pete and to win. It’s a hard blow to take but we have to keep a cool head now.

This ‘what will be will be’ answer will not sit well with club pres­i­dent Nass­er Al-Khe­laifi, who accord­ing to Span­ish TV jour­nal­ist Mon­i­ca Marchante was incan­des­cent with rage after the defeat.

There were seri­ous accu­sa­tions that the PSG pres­i­dent knocked on doors look­ing for the ref­er­ee’s dress­ing room after the game.

Pochet­ti­no also blamed the match offi­cials. ‘How can I explain it? It’s easy to explain. But I think the biggest mis­take comes from VAR for his first goal,” he said.

“When we con­ced­ed nerves and with the feel­ing of injus­tice, we were too open to con­cede more. At 1–1, we were still qual­i­fied but we con­ced­ed two others.

“Madrid had noth­ing to lose at 1–1 to extend the game and we could­n’t react to the situation.”

This week marked the fifth anniver­sary of PSG los­ing 6–1 to Barcelona after lead­ing from the first leg 4–0. It’s even worse for the French club who added Lionel Mes­si to Kylian Mbappe and Ney­mar in a bid to win their first Cham­pi­ons League.

A vic­to­ri­ous Car­lo Ancelot­ti mean­while said: “It was the mag­ic of the sta­di­um with a fan­tas­tic his­to­ry and a club with a fan­tas­tic his­to­ry.” It’s an unfor­get­table night.

“The game changed after their first goal and the atmos­phere was key to that.”