Joelinton shook his head in disbelief. Alexander Isak fell to the floor in deflation. Kieran Trippier exchanged unpleasantries with Kylian Mbappe. Their eyes were as empty as their bodies.
Newcastle had held onto their 1-0 lead for more than 70 minutes and seen off 30 Paris Saint-Germain shots. They could not survive a 98th-minute VAR decision though, after the thoroughly impressive Tino Livramento was penalised for handball.
Livramento had 51 near-faultless touches in the match, but his final one was a ricochet, blocking Ousmane Dembele’s cross with his midriff before the ball spilled out of play off the tip of his elbow. Howling PSG players surrounded referee Szymon Marciniak.
A penalty for this? 🧐pic.twitter.com/igMqwYkMDC
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) November 28, 2023
The man who refereed December’s World Cup final is known for his control of players. Goncalo Ramos was booked for remonstrating. But then came the VAR’s intervention.
UEFA’s lawbook subtly differs from the Premier League’s, failing to make allowances for deflections, however point blank, however unlucky, however cruel. Penalty given.
Deep in the Parc des Princes, less than an hour after Mbappe converted, injustice was woven into the lines on Eddie Howe’s brow. For a coach who does not criticise referees, this was as unequivocal as he gets.
“It wasn’t the right decision,” he said. “There are so many things to take into account, the speed first. It was a ricochet that, when it is slowed down, looks completely different to the live event. The ball hits his chest first, comes up and hits his hand. His hand is not in an unnatural position, it is a running motion. It is a poor decision.”
Before the reverse fixture, the Gallowgate End raised a giant magpie mural. It felt appropriate. Newcastle the upstarts, intent on seizing a glint of silver from the ‘Group of Death’. They left Paris with the sickening feeling that arguably their greatest European win had been stolen from them.
The Parc des Princes lies in Paris’ 16th arrondissement, a cradle of French high society. In popular culture, the phrase ‘le 16e’ is synonymous with PSG’s home, the number shorthand for wealth, power, and prestige. In theory, the financial might of Newcastle’s owners means they could one day join them among the elite. But on Tuesday night, Howe could barely name 16 fit players.
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With at least 14 first-teamers unavailable, Newcastle carried a bench of just seven (two short of the maximum number allowed under UEFA rules), including two goalkeepers and three youth players.
For the early stages of the Carabao Cup? Maybe. But for Newcastle’s most important Champions League game in 20 years? Successive meek defeats to Borussia Dortmund had left Newcastle treading water in Group F, needing a win in Paris to control their own destiny. A loss would have been disastrous.
“Fear of failure is a motivating factor,” Howe said on Monday, expanding on comments he made during the summer. “Some people might see that as negative, but it’s fuelled me all my career and to work as hard as I can to make sure we don’t suffer that experience.”
Newcastle were on that brink. But how do you turn fear of failure into fearlessness? They provided the answer — an unholy potion of lactic acid, sweat, and players too young to know fear itself.
“It’s attached to how you work,” Howe answered. “You need players to play their natural game without thinking of the consequences if something goes wrong. I will always take the blame if there’s blame to be thrown around, so the players play free.”
After 10 minutes, Newcastle were overrun. At half-time, they were deservedly ahead. Lewis Miley started his first Champions League match and showed he possesses a vision aged 17 that few veterans have at 37.
Against Chelsea on Saturday, it was the disguised assist to Isak, the boldness to pull the trigger, the deftness to weight the pass. But in Paris, it was the vision of far-sightedness, of pre-empting where the ball would spill in midfield, sprinting to make three crucial blocks. The beauty of youth is that clarity locks hands with naivety.
That equally applies to 21-year-old Livramento, a relative old-timer compared to Miley but a player in his second full season of senior football, making just a second Champions League appearance, out of position at left-back.
The pair combined for Newcastle’s 24th-minute goal, Miley shuffling the ball away from congestion before elongating his stride upfield. Overlapping Miguel Almiron, he dug out a cross to Anthony Gordon at the far post, who laid it off to Livramento.
Playing on the left rather than his favoured right? No matter. Livramento popped it onto his right foot anyway and sashayed infield, sucking in four PSG defenders. The ball reached Almiron and his curling shot was parried by Gianluigi Donnarumma straight to the feet of Isak. One-nil to Newcastle.
From this moment, it was always going to need a rearguard action. In the second half, Newcastle found themselves backed up against the waving standards of PSG’s ultras, sat deep in a 4-5-1, and enduring, not enjoying, less than 19 per cent of possession.
Over the 90 minutes, PSG racked up an expected goals (xG) tally of 4.47. That Newcastle held out for so long was down to Nick Pope, who delivered arguably his finest display. There was one save in particular, from substitute Bradley Barcola, that suggested this might be Newcastle’s night.
Heroic stuff from Nick Pope! 🧤👏pic.twitter.com/KrwBtaieX7
— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) November 28, 2023
But it was not to be. The Parc des Princes lies less than a kilometre from the birthplace of Marcel Proust, the most famous of French novelists. He was in search of lost time; Newcastle only wanted full time. PSG had scored in each of their past 48 Champions League group games, a competition record. Howe may have feared the consequences of failure, but Newcastle were on the brink of their greatest European success.
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“We believe that we can change the things around us in accordance with our desires,” Proust famously wrote. “Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers.”
But Proust was wrong. Failure cannot always be controlled. In the VAR version of football, a side’s dreams and nightmares are independent of desire and intent. Livramento was in a natural position when the ball struck him from point-blank range. It then deflected off his arm, away from the goal. Deus ex machina, still the intervention came.
PSG created enough chances that their performance merited an equaliser. Maybe, as Isak said post-match, his team went too defensive, too early. But the cruelty was in the circumstance. Newcastle’s Champions League fate lies outside their powers and the cruelty of Mbappe’s penalty was that it threatened to transform the night into a form of failure. Defiant failure, an unjust failure, but, needing a win, failure.
“It’s much more than that,” a tired Howe relayed, answering his final question of the night. “Despite huge numbers of quality players not being here, the group stepped up and gave more, we’ve shown a spirit of togetherness and a willingness to fight for each other that is as good as I’ve ever seen.”
Newcastle are still in Europe. Beat AC Milan and they qualify for the Champions League knockouts if PSG cannot beat Dortmund. Draw with Milan, they finish third and play in the Europa League.
This was a setback, but for a man who fears failure, Howe is remarkably good at dealing with it. Having won just one of his first nine league matches in 2021-22, Newcastle rattled off six wins in the next seven to avoid relegation. They rebounded from their Carabao Cup final defeat to reach the Champions League. This season, after three successive losses, came an unbeaten run between international breaks.
In the city of lights, Newcastle dealt with the brightest of glares. They faced the harshest of decisions. They were not found wanting.
(Top photo: Marc Atkins/Getty Images)