BARCELONA, Spain (AP) \u2014 Maybe Paris Saint-Germain defender Achraf Hakimi was right after all when he said teammate Nuno Mendes is the best left back in the world right now.<\/p>\n
Mendes sure looked like one of the best in the position on Wednesday, keeping star Barcelona forward Lamine Yamal at bay and assisting in one of PSG\u2019s goals in a 2-1 win over the Catalan club in the Champions League.<\/p>\n
Hakimi, a right back who assisted in Gon\u00e7alo Ramos\u2019 90th-minute winner for defending champion PSG, had said ahead of the game that Yamal \u201cwill be playing against the best left back in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is capable of stopping Lamine,\u201d Hakimi said of Mendes, who was named man of the match.<\/p>\n
Yamal got off to a promising start Wednesday, awing the crowd with a great run just minutes into the match at Montjuic stadium. But he couldn\u2019t do much more after that, with the 23-year-old Mendes containing him most of the time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m very pleased to see the younger players thriving in this match; learning, playing well, impressing our fans,\u201d PSG coach Luis Enrique coach said. \u201cWe consistently play rivals of a really high level. The most important thing for me is our DNA, our attitude \u2014 as a squad and as a club \u2014 and that\u2019s what we saw today.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 18-year-old Yamal made his first start for Barcelona since August because of a pubic-area injury sustained while playing with Spain\u2019s national team during the international break in September. He came off the bench for the Catalan club in its 2-1 win against Real Sociedad in the Spanish league on Sunday.<\/p>\n
It was a run by Mendes down the left side that led to Senny Mayulu\u2019s 38th-minute equalizer for PSG after Ferran Torres had put the hosts ahead in the 19th.<\/p>\n
Yamal ended the match being shown a yellow card for a foul on Lucas Hern\u00e1ndez.<\/p>\n
PSG is the the first team to win three straight road games against Barcelona in major European competitions. Barcelona was looking to win its sixth consecutive match across all tournaments.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP soccer: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/soccer<\/p>\n
The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BARCELONA, Spain (AP) \u2014 Maybe Paris Saint-Germain defender Achraf Hakimi was right after all when he said teammate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-191624","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-soccer","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}