On what was essentially opening night for the compacted Champions League, which sees this year’s edition minimised into a tiny tournament in Portugal, there was no lack of drama and excitement in the first quarter final, between minnows Atalanta and money bags Paris Saint-Germain.

Much had been written in the build-up to the game about the gaping difference between the two sides’ playing budgets and the fairytale that has seen the side from Bergamo in Northern Italy, where the Coronavirus crisis really kicked off on March, scrap and battle their way to the quarter-finals. In particular, this is a team making its debut in Europe’s elite competition and which began that campaign by losing their first three fixtures in the group stage. For them to even reach the final eight is a fantastic story and a testament to a team that embodies the concept of ‘more than the sum of their parts’.

And yet, when it came to the crunch, there was something achingly inevitable about the outcome of this fixture – a 2-1 win for the Parisians – despite ultimately needing to make use of every available minute beyond the scheduled ninety.

That the eventual heroes for PSG were not the hugely price-tagged Neymar or Kylian Mbappe but defensive midfield lump Marquinhos and former Stoke City plodder Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting demonstrates perhaps the desperation that had set in among the Paris side, throwing everything at Atalanta in search of a late reprise.

When Mario Pasilic opened the scoring for the underdogs midway through the first half, it was no less than their play to that point deserved. All eleven players appear committed to the high-pressure, high-intensity approach deployed by head coach Gian Piero Gasperini and it is easy to see why they have attracted so many admirers along the way so far. Playing with ambition and imagination in the final third, they created a number of good chances before eventually taking the lead, despite the best opportunity falling to PSG’s Neymar, who completely fluffed his own lines, scuffing wide in a one-on-one situation with Atalanta’s stand-in ‘keeper, Marco Sportiello.

With 2018 World Cup star Mbappe rated as only 80% match fit and therefore starting on the bench, PSG relied heavily on the Brazilian Neymar from the outset. That reliance is almost certainly their Achilles heal, placing what must be a mass of pressure on the shoulders of one player. It was almost like watching the Brazil side that Neymar nearly carried to World Cup glory in 2014, when the South American nation hosted the tournament and ultimately crumbled in the semi-final against Germany, having lost their talisman to injury in the quarters.

Throughout that competition, Neymar was the standout star in a fairly average team that was nowhere near the level of quality demanded by fervent home support. It must be incredibly tough to carry that kind of expectation and deliver consistently, regardless of how many zeroes appear on your payslip.

Throughout this game, Neymar appeared to be living his own personal nightmare – he was regularly appearing in the right places, creating opportunities for himself and others, yet nothing clicked, everything seemed forced and unnatural.

It is easy to dislike this PSG side, for their petro-funded assembly of global talent, their classless baiting of Borussia Dortmund earlier in the competition and for their boringly relentless success in their domestic league.

However, much as we all chuckle when this year’s edition of the PSG Champions League catastrophe plays out in front of us, it’s easy to forget, that these are humans, young men too. After their 6-1 collapse to Barcelona and last year’s humbling at home against a supposedly crisis-ridden Manchester United, there must always be a nagging element of doubt in the minds of these players as to whether things will actually ever go their way.

In the build up to what seems like every PSG tie, there grows an air of ‘Good versus Evil’ about proceedings, with the Paris side being pitched as the bad guys because of their Qatari owners and the funds sloshing around in their budgets. But maybe it’s worth remembering that these are essentially just men, footballers, lads too – when they grew up kicking a ball around on an estate or a beach somewhere, it’s almost certain that they dreamt of scoring goals, winning medals and celebrating with fans, not becoming a collection of Bond-style footballing henchmen, taking up arms against the next plucky underdog story to come their way.

While it would certainly have been an incredible story for Atalanta to become the first Champions League debutants to reach the semi-finals in 14 years, as with almost every football narrative, there are two sides to every story. When Neymar sliced that incredible pass through the tiring Atalanta defence last night to find Mbappe and provide him with the space to lay the winning goal on a plate for Choupo-Moting, there must have been a huge sense of relief for all involved.

Ever since he first appeared as an angular teenager with incredible skills, Neymar has been burdened by the lineage that he represents in Brazilian football – Pele, Romario, Ronaldo et al. The weight of that history alone would be huge to contend and perform with, but this is a player who has also traversed the demands of a spell at Barcelona in the shadow of Leo Messi and then onto his own stage in Paris, where every performance comes with a golden asterisk.

When Neymar and PSG falter, the footballing world smiles, points and laughs. When they succeed, it is shrugged off as only being an inevitable result of the expenditure.

Love or hate Neymar and his band of well-paid men, maybe sometimes it’s ok for them to have their own moment of celebration, overcoming the frustration of a night where it seemed like they might play forever and never score.

After all, if the bad guys always lost, we’d eventually get tired of the good sides winning and would crave the rise of the character villain, the spirited anti-football or the guy who pokes authority in the eye. And we don’t need another Mourinho.