Returning Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio reveal vision of what PSG might have been | OneFootball

It was the first penalty Marcus Rashford had ever taken for Manchester United. It was surely the most pressurised he ever would. Kylian Mbappe could only stand and watch. The World Cup-winning goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon was at least able to dive but Rashford rifled it over him.

The away-goals rule meant the scenario was all or nothing, elimination or progress, deep into added time at the Parc des Princes. United’s underdogs had lost at home. Their resources were so depleted that Tahith Chong came on in the away leg. Against Mbappe and Buffon, Thiago Silva, Dani Alves and Marquinhos, Edinson Cavani and Angel Di Maria. Rashford scored.

It may have been a memory from 2019 that the beaten manager Thomas Tuchel carried with him when he recalled the Mancunian to the England squad last month. It might have been a reason, too, why Paris Saint-Germain maintained an interest in him for quite some time.

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Rashford’s penalty knocked PSG out of the Champions League in 2019 (Getty)

Six years on, he has made it back to the Parc des Princes for a defining Champions League tie; but in the claret and blue of Aston Villa. His teammates include Marco Asensio; PSG firmed up their interest in the serial Champions League winner and signed him in 2023. They loaned him out 18 months later.

His return offers a vision of a PSG that used to be and a Villa that is now: there is aspiration in Aston, big wages paid for glamour loanees with the prospect of a considerable return, whether by winning the FA Cup or recording a top-five finish but, even before then, of a first European Cup quarter-final in 42 years.

Unai Emery seems on a one-man quest to disprove the theory that top clubs can rarely reap a short-term reward by signing in the January window. By doing so, he looks to capitalise on the new genre of player, parked in reserve by the super-wealthy clubs who have amassed alternatives, and the newcomers seem to carry Villa’s hopes.

Elite-level talents have had an impact. Asensio has eight goals and an assist: he is involved in a goal every 61 minutes thus far in his Villa career. For Rashford, the equivalent numbers are three and four, a goal contribution every 90.

In different ways, they were the almost men of PSG Galacticos: Asensio signed the summer Lionel Messi and Neymar left, a winner of more Champions Leagues than the Brazilian, but never quite the superstar. Had Rashford developed at the rate that felt probable early in Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s reign, maybe the serial French champions would have turned an admiration of him into something more formal.

Instead, by the time he belatedly left Old Trafford, his star had waned. Villa faced no competition from PSG for his signature, just as no lucrative offer from France arrived when United may have considered selling him last summer.

Because the PSG project had taken on another look. Rashford and Asensio may only be 27 and 28, each older than Mbappe, but in some ways they represent the lost generation in the French capital. The moneyed Paris Saint-Germain had the decorated, glamorous and expensive who were nevertheless not quite the world’s best – Cavani being a case in point – before ratcheting it up and assembling the most star-studded forward line in history: Mbappe, Messi, Neymar.

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Rashford has been revitalised since leaving Old Trafford on loan (Getty)

Luis Enrique has provided the antithesis and the antidote: making PSG younger, faster, Frencher. A forward line of Ousmane Dembele, Bradley Barcola and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia represents a shift in ethos and a change of pace. The younger Rashford may have ticked the boxes: maybe Dembele, his potential unrealised elsewhere, revived by Luis Enrique, has certain similarities, though the Frenchman’s 32-goal campaign is both better than Rashford’s best and comes in a career which, until then, had brought far fewer.

Meanwhile, Asensio may have been left behind by the emphasis on acceleration. There is no place for a specialist No 10 in Luis Enrique’s 4-3-3, whereas Emery has reconfigured Villa around his compatriot, moving Morgan Rogers from the middle to run the flanks.

Asensio might lack the physicality Luis Enrique demands. Injuries have been an impediment; his Villa career has come in part in cameos. But some of them have been devastating, and his last four goals have come as a substitute, three of them in the Champions League. Emery has used him intelligently but if Villa can win games from the bench, PSG look the likelier to begin intent on blitzing them.

Perhaps Rashford and Asensio are symbolic figures, gifted enough to have played significant roles on such stages but, for different reasons, on the fringes at their parent clubs, the cast-offs priced out of most destinations by their salaries, enticing to an opportunistic manager like Emery.

Villa’s presence in the Champions League quarter-finals could be an anomaly, just as the sight of Rashford and Asensio in their ranks could be. But there is a question of where in the footballing ecosystem the men with glimpses of greatness end up. And for each, the answer this week is at the Parc des Princes, trying to knock the club that signed one and wanted the other out of the Champions League and propel Villa’s unlikely lads into the semi-final.