PSG's historic moment should provoke serious questions over football's future

Yahoo

8 hours ago

Qatar finally win the Champions League. It should be an absurd sentence, but then this was a farce of a sporting contest. It was barely a football match, but an exhibition of superior power – in multiple senses.
Paris Saint-Germain destroyed Internazionale 5-0, in what was factually and tonally the most one-sided final in history. No one, not even the great Real Madrid of 1960, had previously won by five goals before.
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PSG consequently become the second club owned by a foreign state to have won the Champions League, with Inter having endured the misfortune of being beaten in both finals. If the squad felt pain after losing to Manchester City 1-0 in 2023, given they felt they should have won, there was only embarrassment here.
Inter are embarrassed in the Champions League final (Getty)
This isn't to overly rebuke Inter, even if Simone Inzaghi got a lot wrong. The differences in the teams meant Inter again had to be pretty much perfect to have any kind of chance. They were very far from that, as PSG instead looked one of the most complete European champions ever.
Luis Enrique has done a supreme job in fashioning this team, to win both his second Champions League and a second treble. It is certainly difficult not to feel happy for him, an intense but good man. The tragic story of his daughter, who died in 2019 at the age of nine, adds such an emotional element to this victory. Enrique specifically planned to plant a PSG flag in the moment of victory, to echo the moment he shared with Xana in 2015. He was instead moved as PSG fans showcased a tifo recreating the scene, but in their colours. It was a touching moment.
Luis Enrique wins the Champions League for the second time as a manager after success with Barcelona (Reuters)
There is a fitting youth to his new team now, too, as illustrated with how 19-year-olds were responsible for three of the goals. The supreme Desire Doue got two after setting up the first. Senny Mayulu came off the bench to clinch that record. Through that, there were still enjoyable stories within the squad. It is good for football that a unique Georgian playmaker like Khvicha Kvaratskhelia now has a claim to be the best player in the world, the 24-year-old using this stage for a grand statement as he powered in the fourth. That was of course from yet another breakaway into tranches of space, an image that was to characterise the game.
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And yet you can't get away from the fact that all of this is used for entirely non-football reasons, as Qatar revelled in the glory in the same way they did for the 2022 World Cup.
Senny Mayulu scores two minutes after coming on to write PSG's name in the history books (Getty)
Is this really what football is for? Should this not provoke the most searching questions about the sport's long direction of travel? For the answer, you only have to consider the fact that Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the PSG president whose ultimate responsibility is to the Emir, is there beside Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin as one of the most influential people in football.
The Qatari official has risen to become the chair of the European Club Association, who have have been so important in reshaping this entire competition. And yet here, the great showpiece of club football became the showcase of so much that is wrong with the game, with the record scoreline aptly symbolising the scale of the issues. The fact that PSG were so enthralling to watch is part of that. That is the 'sportswashing', to use a term that has long felt like it doesn't sufficiently convey what is happening.
Nasser Al-Khelaifi holds the Champions League trophy (Reuters)
Much of this is political capture of sport, and Qatar's trophy club now have their hands around the European Cup itself.
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You only have to consider how Inter are true football royalty, having previously won this competition three times, and are still the 14th richest club in the world. And yet, typically owned by an asset management fund themselves, there is still an immense gap between them and PSG.
Inter's entire revenue of £327m is just over half of PSG's last reported wage bill – not revenue – and it showed.
Achraf Hakimi scores against his former team to put PSG ahead on 12 minutes (Getty)
Enrique's team may be young but they are also expensive, with almost £100m having been paid for Doue and Bradley Barcola alone. They also benefited from the way the same gaps have reduced the French league to a joke, in contrast to the gruelling title race that Inter have gone through.
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PSG's youthful intensity also showed. There was a chasm between the teams in terms of their vigour. Where Pep Guardiola once said that it was very difficult to know where to press this Inter, PSG seemed to find it so easy.
It was boys against old men. You could suddenly see exactly why Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Matteo Darmian and other players that Inzaghi has revitalised are not at the best-paying clubs. Lautaro Martinez did not have his big club moment.
Desire Doue becomes just the third teenager to score in a Champions League final (Getty)
Doue's shot takes a touch off Federico di Marco as it beats Yann Sommer, doubling PSG's lead (Getty)
Instead, a series of players that were barely known two years ago are now the European champions, looking like the future of the game. Enrique himself also has a claim to be the best coach in the world. His idea of football has been at a level of sophistication way above anyone else, and felt like something new. Opposition sides didn't know how to handle them. Enrique's ideas constantly surprised them.
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Here, the chasm between the teams was such that PSG found it almost embarrassingly easy to score the first goal after just 12 minutes. Doue showed supreme and unselfish presence of mind to square but Achraf Hakimi faced so little by way of a challenge that it was hard not to wonder whether there was an offside. There wasn't. Inter couldn't get close.
Francesco Acerbi of Inter looks dejected after the final whistle (Getty)
The game ceased to be a contest from then, that early. That was made clear by Doue's 20th-minute strike. Even seconds into the second half, after Inter needed the mother of all half-times, the first action was Kvaratskhelia again scorching through for yet another chance.
It was why it felt so strange as a game. It didn't feel like a football match any more, but a long wait for the inevitable, with PSG making Inter suffer more and more. It was great football to watch, and yet so unsettling to consider. These are the two sides of the sport in 2025, never made clearer than by its grand showpiece.