AS THE pomp of Thursday’s Thanksgiving NFL matches came just a day after the similar ceremony of Paris Saint-Germain’s latest outing in the Champions League, it was easier to draw comparisons between the two spectacles.

Not necessarily comparing this game of association football with the nitty-gritty of the various plays, collisions, and intensity of American football, but in the idea of a defensive team looking to win the ball back before leaving the pitch to be replaced by a whole new set of players responsible for offensive play.

When Lionel Messi, Neymar, and Kylian Mbappe were hanging around the centre circle, waiting for the other eight players to win the ball from their opponents Manchester City, they may as well have been on the sidelines awaiting their turn.

On the occasions they entered the game and were able to do their thing in attack, they produced some of the evening's best moments, including PSG’s only goal.

It was a ruthless but short passage of play involving all three, with Messi using Ander Herrera off whom to bounce a one-two — the Spaniard acting as his blocker.

Neymar didn’t touch the ball during it — given the ineffectiveness of some of his other contributions it was perhaps best he didn’t — but his dummy and movement still played a big part in opening up the City defence. A decoy route.

Mbappe lurked at the far post waiting to play his part, on hand to receive Messi’s deflected pass across the six-yard box and find the net through the legs of goalkeeper Ederson.

There are players in the PSG team, such as Herrera, Idrissa Gana Gueye, and usually and most effectively Marco Verratti, who sat out this game due to injury, who can link defence to attack. 

But even with former Tottenham tactician Mauricio Pochettino as their coach they are still overly reliant on individual moments from their talented trio as opposed to being a collective that is effective in and out of possession.

Even some of the handful of clubs with a seemingly endless supply of transfer funds, of which PSG are one, still manage to fail to organise a football team effectively.

Though City have made their fair share of expensive blunders in the transfer market over the years, especially in defence, the Pep Guardiola-coached team that eventually went on to defeat PSG 2-1 on Wednesday, are perhaps now an example for their opponents to follow.

Despite being expensively assembled they are very much focused on the system of Guardiola, who works in tandem with the club’s director of football, his friend and long-time colleague, Txiki Begiristain.

The co-operation between the two roles is very important in the modern game, and Guardiola recently said that Begiristain’s presence is one of the reasons his spell at City is his longest at any of the clubs he’s managed.

“We work together incredibly well,” Guardiola said of their relationship. “When we win, we try to analyse why and when we lose we try to analyse why. We don’t judge each other. We both work for the best for this club.”

Across town, City’s neighbours Manchester United were going down a path closer to that of PSG.

The signing of an ageing Cristiano Ronaldo epitomised the idea of the individual ahead of the collective. 

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was the one who most recently paid the price for the team’s decline when he was sacked last week, but the problem at Old Trafford in the post-Alex Ferguson era is a lack of football direction.

In fitting with the way United are currently run, the man in what should be that role, Ed Woodward, has been more of a director of finance rather than of football. So it’s no surprise the club’s owners continue to take their dividends at the end of the year while the football suffers.

United’s imminent appointment of Ralf Rangnick as an interim manager should, in theory, move things back in a sporting direction.

When the prospect of Rangnick managing United first came up back in 2019, the German commented in an interview with the Guardian: “Can I be somebody who can influence areas of development across the whole club?’ Otherwise, you are only getting half of what I am capable of.”

This is exactly the type of figure United now need to get them back on course on the pitch. 

It remains to be seen whether Rangnick will be afforded such influence, but the suggestion he will remain involved in a consultancy role after his period as interim manager has ended hints he will be.

Speaking at an International Football Arena conference in Zurich in 2015, Rangnick made a telling comment which goes against the current plan at United (if indeed there is a current plan). 

“You need to dictate the game with and without the ball,” he said. “Not through individuals.”

The lineage of Rangnick’s brand of organised, collective, pressing football has many different branches. 

The main branch, and the one that most influenced Rangnick, goes back to Soviet football of the mid 20th century and coaches such as Viktor Maslov at Torpedo Moscow and Dynamo Kyiv, and Valeriy Lobanovskyi also at the Kyiv club. 

At City, Guardiola is influenced more by the Argentine and Dutch schools of this style of football via Marcelo Bielsa and Johan Cruyff.

While over in Liverpool, Jurgen Klopp plays a similar style to that associated with Rangnick, but his influence comes from his mentor at Mainz, Wolfgang Frank, who were in turn influenced by Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan.

“Too often the team with the better individuals won the game because it was all one-versus-one challenges all over the pitch,” Klopp told Jamie Carragher last year.

“If the other player was better than you, how could you win? Sacchi’s organisation made it completely different.”

To go back to the American football analogy, these teams are the offence, defence, and special teams all in one. They are relying on the defensive linemen as much as they are on the quarterback.

It sounds like the total football of Cruyff and Rinus Michels, and it is, but combined with the pressing and organisation of Maslov and Lobanovskyi, and the German counter-pressing of Klopp, Frank and Rangnick.

Though PSG’s attempts to cram three of the best players in the world into their team may give them a chance of achieving their aim of winning the Champions League, which they have so far failed to do, it is a much less sustainable approach than the ones used by Guardiola, Klopp and, Manchester United hope, Rangnick.

Liverpool’s legendary manager Bill Shankly once said: “I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other, and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day.”

Though top-level football may be too far gone for the last part to be true, for any kind of sustained success it at least needs to be true on the pitch, regardless of the size of splashes a club are able to make in the transfer market or the quality of individuals in the squad.

Manchester United appear to be realising this, and as much as they enjoyed the arrival of Messi, PSG fans will be hoping their club follows suit.