{"id":346641,"date":"2021-05-01T23:04:49","date_gmt":"2021-05-01T22:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=346641"},"modified":"2021-05-01T23:26:40","modified_gmt":"2021-05-01T22:26:40","slug":"pochettino-optimistic-mbappe-will-be-fit-for-man-city-clash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=346641","title":{"rendered":"Pochettino optimistic Mbappe will be fit for Man City clash"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mbappe\"<\/p>\n

Kylian Mbappe should be fit to face Manchester City in the UEFA Champions League semi-final second leg, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) coach Mauricio Pochettino says.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The France star sat out the 2-1 Ligue 1 win over Lens on Saturday after sustaining a calf injury in the first-leg loss to Pep Guardiola\u2019s side earlier this week.<\/p>\n

In his absence, Neymar and Marquinhos secured a narrow win for the champions.<\/p>\n

It helped to put pressure back on title rivals Lille and give PSG a morale boost ahead of the game against Manchester City on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Pochettino could offer no guarantees over Mbappe\u2019s availability after the match, but he hopes to have the forward at his disposal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m optimistic for Kylian,\u201d Pochettino told reporters. \u201cWe assess him day by day. I think he\u2019ll be able to play.\u201d<\/p>\n

The win moved PSG two points clear at the top of the table, with three games remaining, ahead of Lille\u2019s clash with Nice.<\/p>\n

Pochettino admired his players\u2019 battling qualities as they held off European competition ticket-chasing Lens, who got a goal back through Ignatius Ganago with half an hour remaining.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very difficult match. Lens play really good football. I really like their game \u2013 we suffered,\u201d Pochettino said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe deserved to win. We had to work hard to get the victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll see tomorrow the state of the players\u2019 condition. The calendar is crazy, especially in these circumstances. We\u2019ll wait until the last moment to make the best decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pochettino admitted it had been tough to recover from their defeat to Manchester City, particularly after an impressive first-half performance.<\/p>\n

They had nine shots to Manchester City\u2019s four in the opening 45 minutes and deservedly led through Marquinhos\u2019 header.<\/p>\n

But second-half goals from Kevin De Bruyne and Riyad Mahrez put the visitors in the driving seat.<\/p>\n

Given that disappointment, Pochettino was thrilled with the level of fitness and attitude displayed against Lens.<\/p>\n

\u201cI liked my team\u2019s character,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t see my team tired in the second half. They looked good physically.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe night after Manchester City was difficult. Against them [City], we played our best 45 minutes of the past four months. It wasn\u2019t easy.\u201d(dpa\/NAN)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kylian Mbappe should be fit to face Manchester City in the UEFA Champions League semi-final second leg, Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) coach Mauricio Pochettino says. The France star sat out the 2-1 Ligue 1 win over Lens on Saturday after sustaining a calf injury in the first-leg loss to Pep Guardiola\u2019s side earlier this week. In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":346642,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10287,13828,4430],"class_list":["post-346641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-kylian-mbappe","tag-mauricio-pocchettino","tag-psg"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=346641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/346642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=346641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=346641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=346641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}