On a chilly, fun, boisterous night in Paris, with the Champions League mega-table scrolling away in the background, Newcastle produced a fine performance at the home of the European champions that left both teams outside the automatic qualification slots, but Newcastle much the happier of the two.
A 1-1 draw means Eddie Howe’s team finished 12th overall. They will now enter the knockout phase in the last two weeks of February, as had always seemed likely, to face either Qarabag or Monaco. More surprisingly, Paris Saint-Germain will join them there after some late score-ticker malarkey nudged them out of the top eight.
Howe will take great heart from this performance, as a weakened team recovered from a start that suggested the ceiling might be about to fall in. As for PSG, the rest of Europe will look at the reigning champions with a little less fear. Vitinha remains a wonderful midfield controller, but the furious full-court press that marked last season’s post-Christmas run was absent here. Newcastle were compact, quick in the transitions, and really could have won this game in the second half.
Paris had been a lovely deep languid grey all afternoon, the only city that looks better in drab, sad January light. By kick-off the Parc des Princes was the usual inferno of choreographed noise. But this was a confusingly poised final group phase game at the start, neither fully alive nor fully dead.
