Pundits are queuing up to tell you PSG 5-4 Bayern wasn’t actually very good | OneFootball

You may be the kind of football fan who thinks a nine-goal thriller in the Champions League semi-final between the two best teams in the world is the kind of thing the game is all about,

But there are more than a few pundits who are here to tell you that you are, in fact, wrong.

PSG 5-4 Bayern had almost every neutral watching on with amazement as highly talented footballers showed just why they play for two of the biggest clubs in Europe.

Despite everyone feeling like they needed a lie down after watching the pulsating affair, a few pundits were on hand to tell you that actually, it was not a very good game at all.

First up was Wayne Rooney who after hearing Harry Kane describe it as moments of “amazing defending”, told his England compatriot that it was actually “really bad.”

“I love Harry Kane. But, there’s no way he can be praising his defenders. Maybe because they are his team-mates. He’s trying to give them a bit of confidence for next week. The defending from both teams was really bad, if he’s being honest.”

“You don’t hear defenders communicating anymore. You used to hear Jamie Carragher screaming at his defenders for Liverpool. It used to annoy me, but it got his full-backs back in. You don’t get that level of communication now. That’s as a result of the coaching.”

To be fair to Carragher, he actually suggested the opposite to Rooney and pointed out that sometimes attackers just play very well.

He told CBS Sports: “Normally when I see a game like that I’ll say ‘the defending is not good enough’ or ‘it is not up to the standard of this level of football’.

“But what I would say is: Every attacking player on the pitch was an eight or nine out of 10. Every attacking player got the better of their counterpart.

“When I remember the goals, it wasn’t like there was a goalkeeper howler or something stupid defensively, it felt like the goals were just great goals.

“It wasn’t like defenders made a fool of themselves. The attacking play was that high it was almost impossible to stop the goals.”

Rooney was joined on the Amazon punditry team by Clarence Seedorf, who was one of the few people to look at that game and somehow think it was good news for Arsenal.

“Ask the goalkeepers if they’re happy. They are not happy, a clean sheet was always sacred for goalkeepers,” he said.

“We have seen a team like Arsenal making that difference this year, having so many clean sheets and coming all the way.

“So if I had to point out one team now, that would be capable to actually bring it home because of that capacity, actually it’s Arsenal.”

Rooney wasn’t done either and said PSG coach Luis Enrique should have done a better job at closing the game out.

“I don’t see how, if you’re a player or a coach, no matter if you’ve won the game, you go into that game having conceded four or five goals and be happy. I think there’s got to be questions asked.”

“I think Luis Enrique is a top coach so when they had the advantage at 5-2, I think then he should have said, ‘right, let’s shut up shop, let’s get behind the ball, make it hard, see the tie out’, potentially that would’ve got them to the final but they didn’t, they went for more goals.

“Vincent Kompany has got a very attack-minded team, and I think you could clearly see they haven’t worked that much on defending because some of the goals we’ve seen are schoolboy goals.

“At this level, we’ve seen some brilliant but immature defending, which is crazy.

“I’d love to play in a game like that but I used to pride myself on defending so I think I would’ve been upset that we conceded that many goals.”

But perhaps the most outrageous criticism came over in Ireland where former Celtic boss Neil Lennon and ex-Birmingham defender Kenny Cunningham debated whether it could even be called a great game.

“I didn’t think they played great,” Lennon said of PSG. “The players looked ordinary tonight, like [Nuno] Mendes, for example, Olise had the better of Mendes.” Worth pointing out here that Michael Olise is having an incredible season and it is not because he only plays against bad defenders.

Cunningham went even further and suggested that the 0-0 between Juventus and AC Milan in 2003, widely regarded as one of the most boring Champions League finals of all-time, was better because it showed both parts of the game on display, seemingly getting himself into knots about what can be classed as a good game.

“We’re saying it was a great game, I think when you start throwing things like ‘this was the best game I’ve ever seen’, really, both teams have to be at their optimum level in terms of, collectively, from an attacking point of view, and also, I think, from a defensive one.

“By definition, it can’t be a great game, by having that many defensive mistakes. It can’t be.

“A great game is when both facets of the game are playing at an optimum level. I mentioned it before I would take the Juventus AC Milan European Cup Final at Old Trafford at nil all any day of the week.”

So sorry if you did enjoy the game, you are quite clearly wrong.