Paris Saint-Germain superstar Kylian Mbappé gets the credit when his team wins. And to his credit, he took the blame when they lost on Tuesday.
The France international said his team’s loss to Dortmund in the Champions League semifinals — which finished 2-0 on aggregate after PSG’s 1-0 loss in the second leg — was down to missed chances, a few of which came from him.
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“I tried to help my team as best as I could but I didn’t do enough,” Mbappé said after the game at Parc des Princes. “When we talk about being efficient in the boxes, I think I’m the one targeted. I’m the guy who should score goals and be decisive. When things are good, I take all the limelight and when they are not, you have to take the shadow. That’s not a problem.
“The first one who should have scored tonight was me. That’s life and we have to move on, me and the team.”
With nearly 70% of the possession and 30 shots in the second leg loss, the Ligue 1 champs hit the woodwork four times and came away empty-handed, but Mbappé said PSG weren’t unlucky, they just weren’t good enough.
“I don’t know if they were better than us. We don’t need to denigrate them,” Mbappé said. “In my humble opinion, they were superior in the two boxes. They came once or twice in ours and scored. We went often in theirs and we never managed to score. It’s a fact.
“I don’t like to talk about being unlucky. When you are good, it doesn’t hit the post, it goes in. Today, we were not good enough, us the attackers.”
Dortmund scored early in the second half through Mats Hummels and did a good job of keeping Mbappé, who played through the middle primarily as opposed to down the left wing, in check.
It could be Mbappé’s last Champions League game with PSG, as the World Cup winner is expected to leave the club at the end of the season. But when asked about his reported move to Real Madrid this summer, Mbappé merely rolled his eyes at reporters and walked away.
PSG had long spells of possession in the last 10 minutes, and Dortmund’s Gregor Kobel pushed Mbappé’s deflected close-range shot onto the crossbar with a superb one-handed save, while the Parc des Princes crowd groaned when midfielder Vitinha’s thumping 25-meter strike rattled the woodwork as full-time approached.
“I don’t think we were inferior in either of the two games,” PSG manager Luis Enrique said. “The result is what it is and I congratulate them and wish them the best for the final. From our side, we need to recover from this heavy blow.
“It is a sad moment when you lose and especially this way. I congratulate Borussia, they have had an outstanding Champions League and in the two games they had competed very well. We have six posts in total, 31 shots but we have not scored a goal. It feels impossible to believe”
Dortmund is on course for their second Champions League title after winning in 1997, while for PSG it’s another season ending without raising the trophy their Qatari owners so crave.
“The players and coach gave their all. Congratulations to Dortmund, we deserved better. It’s a tough game. I’m proud of my team, the youngest in Europe,” PSG president Nasser al-Khelaifi said.
“We’ve reached the semifinals three times in five years. That’s not our objective, it’s still the final. That’s soccer, you have to accept it and sometimes it’s not fair. We’ll accept it.”
Information from The Associated Press was used in this story.
