Stats & Facts: Paris v. Real Sociedad
Following Paris Saint-Germain’s 2-0 win over Real Sociedad at the Parc des Princes last night, check out the key numbers and standout events from the first leg of the UEFA Champions League last-16 tie.
business as usual FOR PARIS
After emerging victorious from last night's game against Real Sociedad, Paris Saint-Germain have now earned their tenth first-leg win in UEFA Champions League knockout ties since the 2011–2012 season, having made it through to the next round of the competition on five of those occasions. Yesterday evening, Les Rouge et Bleu also made it nine victories in their last 12 UCL home games, falling to just one defeat in that time.
A cast-iron defence...
Against the side from the Basque Country, Paris didn't concede a single shot on target in the entire game, with only one team having achieved this feat in the Champions League knockout stage before: Les Parisiens themselves, in their 1-0 win over Real Madrid in the first leg of their last-16 tie back in the 2021–2022 season.
...AND An uncompromising attack
Against Paris, Real Sociedad conceded as many goals (two) as they did across the entirety of their group-stage campaign in this season's Champions League. Before their loss at the Parc, the Spanish side had held the highest number of clean sheets (four) of any team in the competition and had also gone unbeaten in their previous six matches.
Paris's attackers appear to be particularly efficient in the second halves of games, as they have now scored 82% of their goals (nine out of 11) after the interval in the UCL this season, which is the highest percentage held by any team that has scored at least ten goals so far this campaign.
Kylian Mbappé and Bradley Barcola: a terrifying twosome
Having opened the scoring against the Txuri-Urdin, Kylian Mbappé is now the first-ever player to score at least once in each of his last ten home starts in the Champions League, bagging a total of 13 goals in that time. As if that wasn't enough, the capital club's striker has also become the only player to have scored at least four times in each Champions League campaign dating back to the 2016–2017 edition (i.e. across eight seasons).
As for Bradley Barcola, by notching up Les Rouge et Bleu's second goal of the night, the young winger scored the tenth of his professional club career as well as his very first in the Champions League. In fact, the France U21 international has now made five goal contributions in his last six Paris appearances across all competitions, scoring two and assisting in three.