Ina Fassbender/Reuters
Julian Schieber, in stripes, after scoring the only goal in Borussia Dortmund's 1-0 victory at home over Manchester City. Despite its enormous payroll, Manchester City was eliminated from the Champions League without having won a game in the group stage.
LONDON — Which is the greater enigma in European soccer, Manchester City or Paris Saint-Germain?
The Times's soccer blog has the world's game covered from all angles.
Jacques Brinon/Associated Press
Zlatan Ibrahimovic, right, and Paris Saint-Germain beat Porto to become group winner.
The puzzle deepened Tuesday when City, unbeaten this season in the English Premier League, was eliminated from the Champions League without having won any of its six group matches. P.S.G. is doing things the other way around; it is the laughingstock of French soccer but a group winner in Europe.
Neither club is strictly English or French. That no longer applies at this level, where teams are multinational and where things are often financed from abroad.
The Manchester City side that lost, 1-0, to a splendid Borussia Dortmund in Germany on Tuesday has an owner in Abu Dhabi and a coach from Italy, Roberto Mancini. The P.S.G. team that overcame Porto, 2-1, at the Parc des Princes in Paris is financed from Qatar and also is coached by an Italian, Carlo Ancelotti.
The two clubs spend huge amounts to lure famous players who might otherwise not look their way. They refer to such plans as "the project," rather than using old-fashioned terminologies associated with building up teams through money from fans and from television or marketing.
But the curious aspect — the enigma — concerns the coaches. Ancelotti is a European specialist. He proved that while with A.C. Milan, where his teams won the most coveted trophy in Europe — first when he was a player and then with him as coach — even if it did not dominate Serie A.
His adaptation to France has not yet won him respect. After arriving at P.S.G. in late 2011, when the team was leading the top French league, he somehow finished second to Montpellier. Given another summer, and $150 million more to spend on players, the team is now fourth in the league. Yet it is at the top of its Champions League group.
Mancini's record is the opposite. He wins domestic championships in leagues that demand hard, long and consistent application, be it with Inter Milan or Manchester City. But he is no closer to winning the Champions League now than he was in Italy, where, finally, Inter replaced Mancini with José Mourinho — and then conquered Europe.
Praising the coach, or blaming and firing him, is not always the answer. Players must also take responsibility.
"We need to address it," Joe Hart, the City goalkeeper, said after another defeat Tuesday left the team at the bottom of its group. "We've not qualified, not even got into the Europa League. We've let ourselves down. We should be fighting to be in the competition."
Hart's reference to the Europa League raises the issue of whether his colleagues, or his club, really wanted to qualify for the secondary tournament around Europe. Hart's manager, Mancini, scarcely denied that while he wanted to win the Champions League, once that was out of the question, it might be better to concentrate on the English league — starting with a match against Manchester United on Sunday.
Even so, City fielded more first-team players in Germany than Dortmund did. Jürgen Klopp, the Borussia coach whose budget to buy players is one-fifth of City's, rested five players after a tough match against Bayern Munich last weekend.
The only goal scorer in the 1-0 game, Julian Schieber, was making his second start for the club. The joy of Schieber's celebration, the quickness of his dash between defenders to snatch that winner, reflected the approach of his club.
Dortmund does not have an oil stream from the Gulf, and the club's chief executive, Hans-Joachim Watzke, told Reuters that it would not want that. "This is our culture," he said. "The culture of our 75,000 members. Being free and independent is our German heritage."
That argument overlooks, of course, the fact that Borussia faced bankruptcy a decade ago and that it was helped out by the local government and with a loan from its rival, Bayern Munich.
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