Paris Saint-Germain defender Presnel Kimpembe has vowed to never let one of his teams suffer through another loss like the one they suffered against Manchester United last week as he blamed the defeat on his club taking the match too lightly. The French side became the first club to fall in a knockout round match after winning the first leg by two or more goals away from home as Manchester United secured a 3-1 victory in Paris thanks to a late penalty.
It marked the continuation of Champions League frustrations for PSG, who have now lost out at the last-16 for three straight seasons, and Kimpembe says the loss will be hard to move on from. “It hurts me, very bad even, I feel what the fans feel,” he said on Youtube’s Brog Stories channel. “I can see their anger, I realize it, I understand it and, most importantly, I assume it so that I can swallow it. It’s a game that inevitably stays in the heads but that we will have to forget for the rest of the season. “
The 23-year-old also pointed to a lack of grit as the primary reason for the loss, saying the Paris outfit let their foot off the gas after their comfortable win in the first leg. “We lost that grit and that rage we had in the first leg,” he said. “It’s not the fact of having lived through past experiences that made us feel stressed. or whatever it was. No, it was really a self-satisfaction. We took this game lightly, and it’s something that will never happen to me again. It’s enough, never again. Of course we will lose more games in the UCL, but losing games like this is over. I don’t want it to happen to us anymore.”
PSG are comfortably in front in Ligue 1, sitting 17 points clear at the top of the table, but Kimpembe says they will have to put the Champions League exit behind them and try to finish the season in the best way possible. “We’ll have to raise our heads so we can move on, it’s going to be complicated, but there’s still the Ligue 1, the Coupe de France, which is important to us too,” he added. “Even if all the world thinks winning these trophies is easy, it’s never easy.”