MUNICH — Paris Saint-Germain, Champions League winner.
At long last the club that was transformed by Qatari billions and bought and sold a succession of the world’s greatest players in an extravagant bid to get to the top has its hands on the big one.
European club soccer’s grandest prize has a new home after PSG thrashed Inter Milan 5-0 in Saturday’s final.
“It’s in the bag, it’s coming home with us to Paris tomorrow,” coach Luis Enrique said. “My first day at the PSG campus I said the ultimate goal was to fill the trophy cabinet. The only trophy missing was the Champions League. Here we have ticked that box.”
It was the trophy that not even Lionel Messi, Neymar or Kylian Mbappe could deliver to the French club. Luis Enrique has achieved it after overseeing PSG’s shift from the era of galactico signings to one of genuine team-building.
Fitting then that Désiré Doué, the 19-year-old French forward, emblematic of the club’s new generation, was the chief inspiration and player of the match as PSG recorded the biggest win in a final in the competition’s 70-year history. In a scintillating performance, Doué scored two goals and set up another in a little over an hour on the field before being substituted.
“It is wonderful, it is magical. We are rewriting the history of this club and French football,” he said.
Achraf Hakimi, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and substitute Senny Mayulu all scored around Doué’s double in a game in which PSG could have run out an even bigger winner.
“It’s exceptional,” striker Ousmane Dembele said. “It’s especially good since we did it in style.”
Now PSG can truly sit alongside the royalty of European soccer. Not by virtue of turnover or merchandizing but on the merits of its achievements on the field.
The Champions League is the ultimate barometer of the continent’s elite clubs, and up until now PSG has been a flashy contender that always came up short.
That all changed at Allianz Arena, the home of Bayern Munich, one of the titans of Europe, and a fitting stage for PSG’s crowning moment. Not least because it was against Bayern that it lost its only other Champions League final in 2020, leaving Neymar in tears in an empty stadium in Lisbon where fans were locked out because of the pandemic.
On this occasion, thousands of PSG supporters were there to revel in the moment, waving flags, lighting flares and drowning out their rivals from Inter, many of whose supporters left the stadium long before the final whistle.
They’d been partying in the streets of Munich throughout the day, but that was nothing compared with the scenes of joy when captain Marquinhos held the trophy aloft in front of teammates, with fireworks and golden confetti exploding behind them.
“I have nothing left. I have given everything,” Marquinhos told broadcaster Canal Plus. “The fans are proud of us. Make the most of it, guys. I love you.”
After so many setbacks in this competition, PSG truly delivered.
It took just 12 minutes for the French champion to go ahead with a move of speed and precision when Vitinha’s threaded pass into the box found the feet of Doué. The forward could have shot but instead slid in Hakimi to tap into an open net.
Former Inter player Hakimi’s celebrations were muted, but PSG’s fans erupted.
Eight minutes later and the lead was doubled when Doué’s shot from the right of the box deflected off Federico Dimarco and past Inter goalkeeper Yann Sommer.
He got his second in the 63rd, sliding the ball into the bottom corner when through on goal.
Kvaratskhelia added a fourth 10 minutes later and Mayulu struck in the 86th, just two minutes after coming on.
Doué and Mayulu became the third and fourth teenagers to score in a Champions League final following Patrick Kluivert in 1995 and Carlos Alberto in 2004.
Luis Enrique, who won the Champions League with Barcelona in 2015, became the seventh coach to win the competition with two teams and follows in the footsteps of greats such as Carlo Ancelotti, Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho.
He also led PSG to a first treble of trophies — the Champions League added to Ligue 1 and the French Cup — matching his achievement with Barcelona 10 years ago.
His players threw him high in the air in celebration after the whistle.
“We are ambitious. We are going to continue to conquer the football world,” he said.
For PSG, this moment has been 14 years in the making since it was bought by Qatar Sports Investments in 2011 and, awash with newfound riches, started targeting marquee signings to speed up its route to the top.
In came superstars Zlatan Ibrahimovic, David Beckham and Edinson Cavani. The ante was further upped with the arrivals of Neymar for a world-record $262 million, Mbappe and finally Messi, allowing PSG to field possibly the richest array of forwards ever assembled — but still no Champions League trophy to show for it.
It was the departure of that last stellar trio over the past two years that appears to have been the turning point, with a greater focus on the team rather than a collection of stars.
Not that PSG’s transformation hasn’t come at a cost.
It might make for a nice narrative that PSG has eschewed the big-spending approach of before to organically assemble a team to beat all comers from across Europe. The opposite is true. While it may be without the marquee players of the past, this is still one of the most expensive squads in world soccer.
The win also will raise more questions about nation-state involvement in soccer and so-called sportswashing, given Qatar’s lavish backing of PSG in enabling it to conquer Europe. Its victory comes just two years after Abu Dhabi-backed Manchester City won the trophy, again against Inter.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund owns Newcastle, which will return to the Champions League next season with ambitions of its own.
Inter, meanwhile, was on track for a treble just over a month ago but has finished the season empty-handed.
Having pushed Manchester City close in the 2023 final in Istanbul, the Italian giant was totally outclassed by PSG. The sight of many empty seats on Inter’s side of the stadium during the second half suggested fans had seen enough.
“We are extremely disappointed,” coach Simone Inzaghi said. “Defeats make you stronger. We’ve been through this before when we lost the final in Istanbul, but the following year we won the league title.”
