Enzo Maresca believes Manchester City are 'close' to the level of Paris Saint-Germain after competing with the Champions League winners for 45 minutes. City trailed 3-0 at half-time at the Etihad but rallied, ultimately losing by two goals.
Maresca encouraged by spirit and Enrique's message
PSG boss Luis Enrique, who had praised City's past achievements before the game despite their guilty verdict in the 115 case, told Maresca at full-time that his side had been fortunate to leave with the result. Despite concerns about City's first-half collapse after conceding the opening goal, the manager was upbeat about the comeback.
"I really like to play against PSG, to be honest because they are brave, I know they way they want to press, they don't care, they go man to man on the pitch, they are quite dynamic," said Maresca. "I like to play against them and I think we are there, to be honest."
Maresca: We are close
"My feeling is we are there, we are close. The reason why we struggle first half is we concede two goals and you know you are already difficult against them and then think 'Oh my god we are 2-0 down so it is even more difficult.' Luis at the end told me they had been quite lucky during the 95 minutes but we lost, we can move on."
Enrique backed up his private message when speaking to media after the game. The PSG coach feels his team have not had the run of decisions in Ligue 1 this season, but made up for that at the Etihad.
Enrique: Luck was on our side
"It was a really exciting game and what we thought about the game yesterday actually ended up happening," he said. "When you see a game at this level, two teams who are really trying to play football, pressing as high as possible, I think that was the game we thought it was going to be."
"Exciting, incredible, played at a high tempo. That's exactly what happened. We were able to overcome their pressing in the first half and deserved to be 3-0 up at half-time but then I don't like it when we get two halves of football that are so different. I know that the opponents in the second half took a lot of risk and really went for it and created a huge amount of problems for us."
"The team that lost today perhaps were a bit unlucky and I spoke to [assistant] Raphael Pol at half-time and said all the luck that we didn't have in the first games of the French league, we got all of it today. It balanced out a bit in the second half today when the luck was on our side. I think the luck was on our side this evening."
