Man Utd vs PSG: How Kylian Mbappe proved once again he is one of the finest players in the world

It was his pace that Manchester United never came to terms with, as he helped PSG to fly home with two away goals and one foot in the Champions League quarter-finals

You can watch football all your life but sometimes there are players who will smash your sense of what is possible on the pitch. Lionel Messi does this, with skill and awareness and balance. So does David De Gea, with how he can react to save shots that most goalkeepers would only see as they flew into the net.

Kylian Mbappe is in that same bracket. For him, it is his pace that puts him outside the boundaries of what we expect to see on a football pitch. And it was his pace that Manchester United never came to terms with, as he helped PSG to fly home with two away goals and one foot in the Champions League quarter-finals.

Of course it should not be a surprise by now. Mbappe is not exactly unknown. He plays for PSG and has won the World Cup. It was almost two years ago when, at the age of 18, he sliced through Manchester City for Monaco at this stage of this competition. John Stones and Nicolas Otamendi could never come to terms with his speed in that tie, and he scored in both legs to put City out.

No-one could suggest that this Manchester United defence were unaware of Mbappe, or unprepared, or complacent. But they still looked surprised, and at a loss, when he started to speed away from them. There was an early moment when he ran in behind Ashley Young onto a diagonal pass when it looked as if Young, no slouch in his day, would simply collect the ball. But when Mbappe got there first you could not help but wonder how he had got there.

Mbappe’s execution was not perfect in the first half but when he scored the second, it was from a run that the United defence simply could not come to terms with. When he turned and started to sprint, there was no way of legally stopping him, and his finish was perfect. Were it not for a heavy touch when racing through soon after, and De Gea’s sharp advance, this match would finished 3-0 and that surely would have been it.

For all that talk about how much PSG would miss Neymar tonight, consider how this game would have gone had Neymar, or for that matter Edinson Cavani, been the one fit PSG striker. Neither of those two would have scored the goal that Mbappe did, they are not quick enough, nor would they have got inside the heads of the United defence as Mbappe did.

There is an argument that while Neymar is the poster boy for PSG, the global Qatar salesman, the world’s most expensive player, that Mbappe has an edge on him on the pitch. More direct, more selfless, harder to stop. More interested in simply winning the game, rather than trying to embarrass opponents for the fun of it. Mbappe, after all, was on another level from Neymar at the World Cup.

This is not a watertight case, it underrates how deadly Neymar can be when he is in the mood. But this evening was a reminder, to anyone who needed it after the World Cup, that when Mbappe starts running he will move faster across the pitch - or your TV screen - than you would ever expect.

No matter how matter times you have seen it before. And until defences come up with a response, he will continue to surprise even people who think they have done all their meticulous research beforehand.