The Marquinhos Champions League verdict landed hours before Paris Saint-Germain put six past Slovan Bratislava, and it was not the verdict of a captain who thinks any of this is getting easier. Asked in his pre-match press conference about the prospect of a third European title in a row, the 32-year-old delivered a warning rather than a boast.
What Marquinhos said about a third Champions League
“It would be historic! It is very difficult to win one, [then] two, so to win three is so, so difficult,” Marquinhos said, in a press conference attended by Get French Football News. “It is a matter of ambition and motivation. If we want to win, we have to have high expectations and maintain those high levels of expectation.”
Then the line that will stick with anyone who has watched Paris stumble through September: “Other teams have also recruited. It will be even more difficult to win compared to previous years. We will be fighting from the very first match to show that we can go far in this competition.”
It is a striking piece of framing from a player who has been at the club long enough to remember when European nights were a source of dread rather than expectation. Luis Enrique’s side beat Inter Milan in Munich two years ago, then saw off Arsenal in Budapest last summer to retain the trophy. Marquinhos has lifted both.
Why he is right about the history
The numbers back the captain up. PSG are one of only nine clubs ever to retain the European Cup or Champions League, and only the second to do it in the Champions League era after Real Madrid’s run between 2016 and 2018. Go one further and the club would be in genuinely rarefied company: only Real Madrid, Ajax (1971-73) and Bayern Munich (1974-76) have ever won three or more in succession. You can see the full list of clubs to have gone back-to-back and just how thin the air gets above it.
That is the weight Marquinhos is describing. It is also, quietly, a piece of expectation management from a captain whose team has started the domestic season badly — winless in Ligue 1 with two points from three games, seven adrift of leaders Monaco after a defeat to the principality club at the weekend.
The reply on the pitch
Whatever the caution in the press room, the performance that followed was the least ambiguous thing Paris have produced all season. PSG beat Yaya Touré’s Slovan Bratislava 6-1 on Matchday 1, Ferran Torres helping himself to a hat-trick, Ousmane Dembélé scoring twice and Fabián Ruiz adding a late sixth. Maghnes Akliouche created one of the goals with a run through the Slovak defence; Dro Fernández played the full 90 minutes; Khvicha Kvaratskhelia did not need to leave the bench. Paris racked up 4.71 expected goals, per PSG Talk.
One night against the weakest opponent they will meet in the league phase does not settle anything, and Marquinhos plainly knows it — his answer was given before a ball was kicked, and nothing about a 6-1 changes the structural point that the field behind them has strengthened. But there is a difference between a squad that has forgotten how to attack and one that had simply not been allowed to. On Wednesday at the Parc des Princes, the captain’s team looked very much like the second thing.
The defence of the trophy is one game old. The hard part, as Marquinhos says, is everything that comes after.
