This article is part of Football FanCast’s The Chalkboard series, which provides a tactical insight into teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…

Real Madrid lost 3-0 to PSG in the Champions League on a disappointing Wednesday evening and one key battle had a huge influence on proceedings.

On the chalkboard

Angel Di Maria was PSG’s hero on the night, scoring twice in the absence of both Neymar and Kylian Mbappe.

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It must have stung for Los Blancos, having sold the Argentina international to Manchester United in 2014.

Of course, we expected this; earlier this week we predicted that Thomas Tuchel could deploy the 31-year-old Argentine on the left-wing instead of his usual right flank, and that pitted him against Real right-back Dani Carvajal.

Carvajal couldn’t contain Di Maria

Obviously, it was the attacker who came out on top in the individual battle.

Di Maria not only scored twice on the night but also deployed two key passes, had three shots on goal, four dribbles and a passing accuracy of 85.3%. Carvajal, on the other hand, did not really cover himself in glory with one tackle, no interceptions and no blocks to his name.

Just by looking at the statistics, it becomes pretty apparent that Di Maria was not really dealt with properly.

The blame, ultimately, has to be laid at the door of the 27-year-old defender, who was matched up against the PSG star throughout the 90 minutes.

Quite simply, he couldn’t deal with him and his inability to properly control Di Maria directly led to two goals in their 3-0 defeat.

One has to hope that Carvajal can recover quickly as Real will need him throughout the group stages; they still have to face Club Brugge and Galatasaray.