Since 1990, only one side had ever successfully defended the Champions League – Real Madrid, who won three in a row between 2016 and 2018. Paris Saint-Germain’s victory in the final on Saturday elevates them to a new tier of the pantheon. No bad side has ever won the European Cup or Champions League, but only great sides have ever retained it.
Arsenal pushed them much closer than Inter had in losing in the final the previous year, and there is always something slightly unsatisfying about a victory on penalties, but the quality of this PSG cannot be denied. They put six past Bayern in the semi-final – their superiority far greater than the one-goal aggregate margin would suggest. It was a similar story in the quarter-final, in which a 4-0 aggregate victory didn’t really reflect how much better they were than Liverpool. And while Chelsea may think they were slightly unlucky to lose the first leg of their last-16 tie away to PSG 5-2, the 3-0 result in the second leg was a devastating assertion of authority: three goals scored by an almost bored opponent apparently just as they felt like it.
Although it’s the attacking verve that catches the eye, PSG also have a midfield that, particularly when Fabián Ruiz is available, is capable of controlling possession and stifling a game, just as the great Spain sides have done over the past couple of decades. In that sense Luis Enrique’s heritage as part of the great Barcelona team of the late 90s, when he played under Louis van Gaal and alongside Pep Guardiola, is clear. Luis Enrique now stands as one of the greats of European coaching: only Carlo Ancelotti has won more European Cups or Champions Leagues and only Bob Paisley, Zinedine Zidane and Guardiola have won as many as his three.
As the world grapples with the end of the Guardiola consensus, Luis Enrique has perhaps found a model for the future. Allied to the technical quality and control in midfield, his sides display a thrilling directness wide – similar to that offered by Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams in the Spain side that won the Euros in 2024. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia may have supplanted Yamal as the best player in the world on form right now. Give him room to run into, as Bayern did too often, and there is an inevitability about the outcome. Arsenal did well to restrict him in the final, with Bukayo Saka doubling up with Cristhian Mosquera, but even then, Kvaratskhelia was the source of the PSG equalizer, the slightest hesitation and panicked response from Mosquera producing the penalty.
Go toe to toe with PSG, as Bayern did, and Kvaratskhelia and Desiré Doué will inevitably revel in the space. Arsenal had little option but to sit deep and absorb pressure. While that may frustrate those who want all soccer to be like the first leg of PSG v Bayern, defending is also part of the game. With better forwards, the approach might even have worked for Arsenal. But they struggled late on, in part because Viktor Gyökeres could not hold the ball up, and in part because Noni Madueke could not replicate Saka’s quality of delivery from set plays. Even then, they were one small mistake from a 1-0 win; and even after that they lost because they twice missed the target in the shootout. The gameplan wasn’t the problem; a couple of minor details were.
But however appealing PSG’s soccer, there are a couple of caveats. Firstly, their players are much fresher than those of most of their European rivals – Arsenal especially. David Raya, Declan Rice, Martín Zubimendi, Gabriel and William Saliba all played more than 2,500 minutes of league soccer this season, while a further four players played more than 2,000. Of PSG’s starting XI, only Vitinha played more than 2,000. And that’s before taking into account how much more demanding the Premier League is than Ligue 1: Wolves, Burnley and West Ham offer significantly more of a test than the French equivalent bottom three of Metz, Nantes and Nice.
PSG’s wage bill is roughly double that of the next highest in France, Marseille, and more than 10 times that of Le Havre, the lowest in Ligue 1. Their wealth has effectively destroyed the domestic circuit as a contest, and the source of that wealth should never be forgotten. It’s 15 years now since Qatar Sports Investment bought PSG and, having finally realized that celebrity soccer players are rarely the way to (on-field) success, they have the sort of team they must have dreamed of. All 10 outfield players started the last two finals and, with only two of them 30 or older and five 25 or under, there’s no reason they should not continue to be successful for a long while yet.
The question, though, is at what cost, both to the balance of the French league, and to any notion that soccer may yet retain some sort of community or spiritual value, rather than simply being the propaganda tool of an autocratic state.
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This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.
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