PSG score late to sink Barcelona 4-2 in Champions League blockbuster

Late strikes by Vitinha and Fabian Ruiz grab victory for PSG as they aim to win the Champions League for the third season running. Save Share Vitinha’s superb late strike proved crucial as reigning champions Paris Saint-Germainsaw off rivals Barcelona 4-2in a dramatic game between two of the leading contenders to win this season’s Champions League. The match on Tuesday was poised at 2-2 when the Portuguese playmaker, who came third in last year’s Ballon d’Or ranking, controlled on his chest and fired in from just outside the box in the 81st minute at the Parc des Princes. Fabian Ruiz then sealed PSG’s third victory in as many matches in this season’s competition, as they aim to win the Champions League for the third season running. It had briefly looked as though Barcelona would leave the French capital with a point when Lamine Yamal, who is hoping to win this year’s Ballon d’Or, stabbed in Barcelona’s second equaliser on the night. Desire Doue had earlier opened the scoring for PSG, and Lucas Hernandez got their second goal after teenager Xavi Espart found the net for the Catalans. The defeat is a setback for Barcelona, albeit not one that is likely to seriously hurt their prospects of advancing further in Europe’s elite club competition. They had travelled to France on a run of 11 consecutive wins at the start of the season in all competitions. That sequence is now over, but the goals keep coming, and Yamal’s strike here was Barcelona’s 50th of the season all told. PSG, meanwhile, have now won seven games in a row between Ligue 1 and Champions League, but they lost both Ousmane Dembele – last year’s Ballon d’Or winner – and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia to injury on the night. It remains to be seen how seriously hurt those two attackers are, although Doue was the real star of the show here and Luis Enrique’s team are well set to comfortably reach the knockout phase at this rate. This was the 14th meeting of the teams in the Champions League in the last 13 years, and for Barcelona it was probably not their biggest game of the week – beat Real Madrid at home this coming Sunday, and they go nine points ahead of their great rivals in La Liga. That helps explain why Rodri, the 2024 Ballon d’Or winner, was left on the bench at kickoff, although Raphinha was back in the starting lineup after a recent spell out....