@anyi.manchester.u: 🚨 Joao Neves on Vitinha after PSG’s 4–2 victory over Barcelona: “Before the match, we knew Barcelona would try to put pressure on Vitinha. You don’t play against PSG without studying him. If you allow him to receive the ball comfortably, he can control the game. So of course they were going to try to stop him. I remember speaking to him before we went out. I said, ‘I think they’re going to come for you tonight.’ He looked at me and said, ‘Then you have to be ready to receive the ball.’ That was it. And that’s Vitinha. He’s not somebody who spends 20 minutes explaining how difficult the match is going to be. He already knows what he needs to do. Beginning of the first half, you could feel how aggressively Barcelona were pressing. Sometimes I would look towards Vitinha and there were already two players moving towards him. But he never looked worried. There was one moment when I thought he was going to play the ball straight back because the space had disappeared. Instead, he moved slightly, gave himself another angle and found me. Afterwards I said to him, ‘How did you even see me there?’ He said, ‘Because I knew you’d be there.’ And I started laughing because that’s the sort of answer he gives you. But it tells you something about him. He’s thinking about the next pass before the first one arrives. People see him turning away from pressure and think he’s just very good technically. Of course he is. But there’s something else. He trusts the players around him. When I’m playing with him and Fabian, I know that if Vitinha is under pressure, I need to move. I can’t stand there watching him try to escape 3 Barcelona players. Sometimes the best thing you can do for a teammate is give him somewhere to play the ball. And that’s what we tried to do tonight. But the funny thing is that Barcelona kept trying to stop him from influencing the game, and he kept finding ways to influence it. If they followed him, he created space for somebody else. If they pressed him, he moved the ball. If they gave him a little room, he started controlling the tempo again. Then we got to 2–2. And Vitinha scored. I ran towards him, and I remember thinking, ‘Of course it’s him.’ Because after everything Barcelona had done to make his evening difficult, he was still the one who made theirs difficult with that goal. I told him afterwards, ‘They spent the whole game chasing you, and you still scored.’ He just smiled. That’s what I admire about him. He doesn’t need to be the loudest player. He doesn’t need everybody talking about him before the match. He just wants the ball. And sometimes I think people forget what his position actually is. He’s not supposed to be the player who gets all the attention. He’s the one who helps the team function, who connects everything, who makes the difficult passes look normal. But tonight, he did all of that and scored the winning goal against Barcelona. For me, that’s the difference between being a very good midfielder and being somebody your opponents have to prepare their entire game around. Barcelona knew how important Vitinha was to us. They tried to stop him. And now they’re going home having lost to his goal. I think he’ll enjoy that.” [ This is the source @ChinoUTD ]#psg #barca #barcelona #creatorsearchinsight #capcut

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Tuesday 20 October 2026 23:51:36 GMT