While players remain under quarantine, Paris Saint-Germain center-back Abdou Diallo took the time to speak with TF1 (via Culture PSG) about various topics, including how his first season in the French capital is going.
The conversation began with the hamstring injury that Diallo suffered back in February, which caused him to miss six games. Furthermore, the 23-year-old explained that although his injury isn’t forcing him to miss training or playing time going forward, he does plan to have surgery to repair the damage once the season is over.
One of the other topics that the French outlet brought up is how Diallo is handling his first season playing for the biggest club in the country, which Diallo admits, is an adjustment period for him.
“It’s a first season of adaptation, we’ll say that, in the end, the playing time is not bad even if I am necessarily competitive and ambitious, so I would have liked to have done more and to have more,” Diallo said. “But now, it’s done, we can’t go back on it, we must especially focus on what is happening.”
Then the conversation switches to the ambitions of PSG compared to that of his former club, Borussia Dortmund. It’s no secret that the capital club has ambitious plans of winning everything, which includes their first UEFA Champions League. The European trophy is one that PSG has spent significant amounts of money in chasing, but continues to elude them.
Meanwhile, Dortmund is a relatively big club in Germany; however, they don’t possess the ambitious goals of PSG. The German club is content with playing second fiddle to FC Bayern Munich as they aren’t afraid of helping their rival by selling their key players to them. Despite “making their stars,” they rather receive the cash instead of competing for trophies against Bayern.
“I’m going to compare to Dortmund, and it’s different because Dortmund is a very big German club with a very big fervor, we saw it in the first leg, so there is also some pressure, but it’s true that at Paris is borderline exacerbated,” Diallo said. “We want everything right away, and that’s the big difference with Dortmund.”
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