Former Paris Saint-Germain boss Mauricio Pochettino has narrated the difficulty he had playing Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe together when he was in charge of the club.
The Argentine tactician was at the helm of affairs at the Parc des Princes between January 2021 and July 2022, and had to contend with a squad filled with megastars that included Messi and Mbappe, Neymar, Angel Di Maria, Mauro Icardi, Sergio Ramos among others.
It became a big problem for Pochettino to deal with, something he had never faced in his managerial career, and ultimately led to his departure.
“Messi wanted to build from the back, slowly, with combinations and passes. Because he has the quality to receive the ball and dribble past one, two, three players… But if we were playing for Mbappe, we couldn’t play for Messi,” he recalled on The Overlap.
“If we were deep and won the ball back, he would look for space, so the objective was to give him the ball and make him run. But when we were playing for Messi, Mbappé would tell me: ‘My strength is running, and I can’t do it.’”
Pochettino’s time at PSG
The former Tottenham boss oversaw 84 games with PSG, winning 55 of them, drawing 15 and losing 14.
He won the Ligue 1 title, Coupe de France and Trophee des Champions.
