Pressure is all on new Paris St. Germain coach against old foe

Paris St. Germain has dominated French soccer, winning four straight Ligue 1 titles and all four domestic trophies in the last two seasons, but it has exited in the Champions League in thequarterfinals in each of the last four years. Unai Emery was hired to end that.

The young Basque earned the reputation as one of the top coaches in La Liga, but his first season inFrance hasn’t been easy one. PSG trails Monaco by three points and has already lost four games. In 2015-16, it suffered only two defeats as it won the Ligue 1 title by a record 29 points.

Emery’s future will likely depend on whether PSG can get past Barcelona in the round of 16 of the Champions League, which begins with the first leg on Tuesday.

In two of the last fourseasons, PSG has lost to Barca in the quarterfinals without winning a game.

This is a different PSG team from two years ago, though. Then, it depended on Zlatan Ibrahimovicas its go-to striker. Ibra moved to Manchester United over the summer, leaving the scoring to Edinson Cavani. The Uruguayan has delivered with 33 goals but others have struggled. In particular,Argentine star Angel Di Maria has been a big disappointment in his second season with just two goals in 20 games.

Such was the concern about PSG’s attack that it went out and spent$80 million during the January transfer window on German Julian Draxler from Wolfsburg and Portuguese Goncalo Guedes from Benfica. Guedes is ineligible for the knockout stage, butDraxler should start up front for PSG with Cavani and Di Maris against Barcelona.

Draxler has been impressive so far, which is more than can be said for PSG’s summer recruits. GrzegorzKrychowiak and Jese cost almost $60 million but have contributed little.  Hatem Ben Arfa, signed as a free agent from Nice after scoring 17 games last season, began the seasonin Emery’s dog house and has yet to score in 20 league games.

Emery has had little success against Barca, winning just one of 23 games at Almeria, Valencia and Sevilla, but PSGcaptain Thiago Silva thinks his coach’s experience against Barcelona will still be valuable.

“He has coached a lot of matches against Barcelona, notably with Sevilla,” Silva told the PSG Web site. “I think he will be able to point out their weaknesses to us.

“With hismentality and knowledge of the game, I think we are better equipped than we have been in our recent matches against Barcelona.

“Against a team like that, you quite simply have to have aperfect match, playing your best soccer and giving your absolute all. We know that our objective is to qualify for the quarterfinals.”

Barcelona coach Luis Enrique is takingnothing for granted against PSG.

“Knowing Unai,” he said at Monday’s press conference, “I know he will try to make our life complicated. He knows us perfectly, he knows exactlywhat we have to offer. Our goal will be to keep the ball and create space because they will be taking risks. They are now more thorough than they used to be and they are more structured, and they alsohave great forwards.”