Unai Emery believes there is no shame in being eliminated from the Champions League by title holder Real Madrid, and is confident Paris Saint-Germain can capture the trophy in the future.
Whether the Spaniard is given another chance to win the tournament with PSG remains to be seen. Les Parisiens limped out of the round-of-16 stage in a flimsy showing which contrasted with the Parc des Princes’ explosive home support.
“We all want to win this competition quickly. We’ll continue with patience, and build a team that can win,” Emery told ESPN.
Related: Emery’s PSG tenure fizzling out after meek European elimination
“I’m sure this team can win the Champions League. The supporters will see that Paris will win this competition one day.
“Losing to Madrid is not a disappointment, but going out in the last 16 is.”
Paris Saint-Germain is still in with a good chance of capturing a domestic treble, but the lavish spending overseen by the club’s Qatari owners is intended to establish Emery’s side as a world force. In a two-legged bout which largely fell below expectations in terms of quality, PSG was eventually overshadowed by Real despite a promising start.
“The first leg was the key because we were better over the first 80 minutes than them,” Emery claimed.
“They controlled 60 percent of this match and we couldn’t do enough in the 40 percent we controlled.”
Related – Poll: Should Emery or PSG brass take blame for Champions League exit?
The last-16 exit means PSG hasn’t ventured further than the quarter-finals since the 1994-95 edition of the Champions League. That tournament had half the number of teams seen in today’s version, enabling PSG to just beat Barcelona before it was booted out the semi-final stage by AC Milan.
Some of these decisions are easy. Some are agonizing. The deadline for NFL teams to designate franchise or transition players passed at 4 p.m. ET Tuesday with a fair amount of activity, all of it impactful.
For some, it’s a disappointing day, as players find out they’ll need to wait for the long-term contracts of their dreams and teams find themselves confronting the loss of an important player or two. For others, it’s a thrilling day, as the franchise tag numbers have grown so large that some players don’t mind the tag anymore.
For fans, it can be a confusing day, which is why we’re here to help. Here’s our quick-reaction look at who came out of the 2018 franchise period looking good and who came out of it with reason for concern:
WINNERS
Sure, it’d be better to have a long-term deal. But the defensive end franchise number this year is a whopping $17.143 million, and thanks to health and suspension issues in his first three years, Lawrence couldn’t have expected the Cowboys to rush into a commitment off one monster season. Lawrence will be 26 this time next year, and franchising him again in 2019 would cost Dallas $20.5716 million. So as long as he keeps playing at a high level, he’ll be in a great position. The edge rushers who got franchised last year — Jason Pierre-Paul, Chandler Jones and Melvin Ingram — each got long-term deals, so there’s a template for Lawrence and the Cowboys to get something even bigger done before July 16.
The Rams’ decision to franchise safety Lamarcus Joyner instead of Watkins means they can’t franchise Watkins, the former Bills first-rounder who was traded to Los Angeles prior to last season. Watkins didn’t put up big numbers in the Rams’ high-powered offense, but he did stay healthy for the first time since his rookie season, and Rams coaches were impressed with the way he handled a role that sometimes fell into the dreaded “decoy” category. He doesn’t turn 25 until June and is still viewed by enough people around the league as a top-level talent that he can expect a big deal ($12-$13 million per year?) if the Rams don’t sign him in advance of free agency.
Sammy Watkins caught 39 passes for 593 yards and eight touchdowns in 2017, his first season with the Rams. Chris Williams/Icon Sportswire
Not because of anything that happened Tuesday, but just as a reminder that both Brees and Solder got provisions put in their last contracts that prohibited the Patriots and the Saints from franchising them once the deals expired. That makes Solder an unrestricted free agent, and with the final three years of Brees’ deal automatically voiding next Wednesday, it gives the Saints a true deadline for Brees’ likely lucrative extension.
The Bears pulled a surprise move by applying the transition tag to Fuller, but think of it this way: The transition tag price is $12.971 million, which is $4.445 million more than Fuller would have made this season if the Bears had picked up his fifth-year option a year ago. That means he has already played himself into a 52 percent raise, and he could end up getting even more if another team wants to offer him a big contract. The transition tag allows other teams to make offers to Fuller and the Bears to keep him if they’re willing to match those offers. Odds seem decent that he’ll end up sticking in Chicago on a long-term deal, but the transition tag gives him a high starting point for negotiations, and he’s in a lot better shape than he was last summer, when the Bears had him on the trade block.
LOSERS
Yeah, the $14.544 million is nice. Specifically, it’s the 43-percent-more-than-the-average-annual-salary-of-any-other-running-back-in-the-league kind of nice. But we all know Bell wants a long-term deal, and for the second year in a row, it’s clear that he and the Steelers don’t see eye-to-eye on what he deserves. If they can’t get a deal finished by mid-July, Bell faces another 400-touch season at age 26 and the possibility of an early breakdown under the kind of workload he carries in the Steelers’ offense. Even if he makes it through the season healthy and finds himself in the running back version of Kirk Cousins’ situation this time next year, he isn’t a quarterback, which means he isn’t likely to enjoy the kind of eye-popping raise for which Cousins is in line right now.
That’s right. There are no winners in the Steelers/Bell situation. Pittsburgh faces another offseason through which Bell is sure to hold out, and it’s possible that he could even sit out a regular-season game or two, as Seattle’s Kam Chancellor did a couple of years ago. The Steelers’ best-case scenario if they can’t get a Bell deal finished before July is that he plays great and they’re in this same spot next year, when franchising their superstar back for a third straight season would cost $20.94336 million. If they can’t get him signed to a long-term deal by the July 15 deadline, this looks like Bell’s last season as a Steeler.
Once Washington traded for Alex Smith, there was no way they were really tagging Kirk Cousins again for nearly $35 million and trying to trade him. As such, Tuesday just marked the expected end of Cousins’ time in Washington and served as a reminder of how badly the organization bungled his situation each of the past two offseasons. How good would Washington look right now if, two years ago, the front office had given Cousins the $19 million a year he wanted then?
Le’Veon Bell has been franchise-tagged for the second straight year, and he’ll make $14.544 in 2018. Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports
The Dolphins rushed right out and tagged Landry to the tune of $15.982 million on the first day teams could tag players, and everybody was confused. The confusion hasn’t abated, as Miami spent the entire combine talking to teams about potential Landry trades, and then he informed the team that he would sign the tag, which means they can’t rescind it anymore. It still seems that the most likely outcome is a trade, but at this point, it seems that any trade would require Landry to have a new deal in place with the acquiring team. So we wait.
Worst case, Landry is on a team that no longer seems to want him for one more year at a premium price. Best case, he gets the deal Miami never wanted to give him from a new team. It’s tough to decide whether he’s a “winner” or a “loser” in this particular sweepstakes just yet.
The Champions League round of 16 matchups enter their second legs on Tuesday, headlined by Paris Saint-Germain’s clash with Real Madrid at the Parc des Princes.
The two fabled clubs, along with 14 others, will hope to punch their tickets to the quarter-final round and get closer to sitting atop the European football hierarchy.
As the clubs prepare to do battle, test your historical knowledge of past round of 16 matchups here:
Former Ohio State and NFL running back Chris “Beanie” Wells is seeking treatment for a brain injury he believes was caused by playing football.
Wells, speaking Monday morning on 97.1 The Fan radio in Columbus, Ohio, said he had been absent from his radio show on the station as he sought medical advice and treatment in California. The former All-Big Ten running back and NFL first-round draft pick said he recently underwent an MRI on his brain after experiencing headaches and some speech and memory problems.
“I have some plaque separation,” Wells, 29, told his co-host Tim Hall on “The Tim and Beanie Show.’ “And when you have that plaque separation, it shows that you experienced some sort of traumatic brain injury. Obviously that traumatic injury for me would come from playing football. Not only that. They had some cells tacked on to that separated plaque that I needed to get under control.
“I’m still not out of the woods yet, but it’s coming. I’m hopeful.”
Running back Beanie Wells played for Ohio State from 2006 to ’08 before being selected No. 31 overall by the Cardinals in the 2009 NFL draft. Andy Lyons/Getty Images
Wells said he has always spoken quickly but has struggled to find words before speaking.
“When you start to feel a little bit indifferent upstairs, it scares you,” Wells said. “So you want to go and get that checked out, and it was going on for about six or seven months. I’m just glad at this point in time I have an answer for it, and I’m addressing getting it squared away.”
Wells said he would appear on his radio show at least once a week while he continues to receive treatment in California.
Ranking top 100 NFL free agents »
