Champions League final: PSG 5 Inter 0 – Desire Doue stars as Parisians end long wait to become European champions
Paris Saint-Germain landed European football's biggest prize on Saturday night, dismantling Inter 5-0 in Munich to win the 2024-25 Champions League, only the second French side to be crowned continental champions, after Marseille in 1993.
PSG have made a habit of starting quickly in the Champions League this season and the final was no different, Luis Enrique's team finding themselves 2-0 up after 20 minutes thanks to goals from Achraf Hakimi and Desire Doue. In an era where showpiece events can be sterile, cagey affairs, this was very much business as usual for the French champions.
Advertisement
To their credit Inter improved after half-time but the game was sealed just after the hour mark when Doue scored his second of the evening, after delightful work from Ousmane Dembele and Vitinha. Further goals from Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Senny Mayulu were merely the icing on a highly impressive cake. Their winning margin of five goals is the biggest ever recorded in a Champions League final.
The Athletic's writers break down the key moments from a memorable game.
Can you really have much European Cup heritage when your club is only 55-years-young, has spent only 40 of those years playing at this rarefied level, and just 12 of them at these late, defining stages of the competition?
Well yes you can, if you're Paris Saint-Germain: you can have a heritage of failing and falling short, of calamity and collapse, of wasting talent and resources at an unprecedented scale.
In recent years, such a commanding first half performance — soaring into a 2-0 lead inside 20 minutes — might still have set us up for another night of schadenfreude across much of the rest of Europe.
But as everyone has been at pains to point out on the road to Munich and throughout PSG's run to this final, those Benzema hat-tricks at the Bernabeu, late Rashford penalties and remontadas now feel a thing of the past.
Everyone expected Luis Enrique's side to at least dominate possession. In the end, they dominated entirely. For all the talk of Inter's threat on transition after their helter-skelter semi-final with Barcelona, the Serie A side were contained, controlled and totally overcome.
The Qatari state's vision of a team of superstars lifting European football's greatest prize has not come to pass, but it was perhaps inevitable — given the level of expense — that at some point, PSG would make history.
Advertisement
And this young, hungry, brilliantly-talented team — such a departure from the PSG sides of the recent past — may well be the future too.
Mark Critchley
Inter were on course for a treble going into the end of April. Emulating the immortals of 2010 was an opportunity they cautiously believed in seizing.
In the end, Inter finished the season empty-handed — unless the Club World Cup figures as a goal.
It is hard to imagine an exhausted team being up for it. Much has been made of the average age of this Inter team and how the squad needs to undergo a rejuvenation over the summer.
Overseeing that process will be president Beppe Marotta and sporting director Pier Ausilio who will meet Simone Inzaghi this week to discuss his future.
In addition to new younger players, Inter might be in need of a new coach if Inzaghi decides he has taken this team as far as he can.
Make no mistake this has been a painful week for Inter.
Losing the Scudetto on the final day was hard to take. But the pain would have been salved had they won the Champions League, the only trophy this group of players is missing.
Getting over the disappointing denouement of this campaign will take a long time. It will live with these players for the rest of their careers.
James Horncastle
Desire Doue has been enormous fun this season. PSG have such a glut of talent that standing out in their crowd would be a challenge for almost anyone, but Doue has often been a delight — and perhaps that's because he has felt so new and novel during this Champions League run?
Most people knew his name a year ago, when he became a gossip column staple ahead of his transfer from Rennes, but how many really appreciated his body of work or could speak descriptively on what made him so talented?
In material terms, Doue had an exceptional impact on this final. His drifting movement behind Inter's defence created the first goal and he scored the second, running the length of the pitch to keep up with a counter attack and eventually receive Ousmane Dembele's superb final pass.
His second goal was more than a moment; it was history. It put the game beyond doubt and put Inter away.
But Doue is in this rare territory in which, other than for those who watch him in Ligue 1 every week, he is doing something different in every Champions League round. A bit of skill. A type of finish. Some nous that he was presumed not to possess.
First and foremost, his assist and goals have won his team the European Cup for the first time. That matters more than anything else. But his part in that historic achievement comes in a specific context — he has spent the year gently exploding into the mainstream, with this final crescendo in Munich, in the biggest club game of all.
1+1 – Paris SG's Désiré Doué is the sixth different player to both score and assist in a UEFA Champions League final, while at 19 years and 362 days, he's the youngest to do so. Star. pic.twitter.com/6k8X0j3Fvj
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) May 31, 2025
Seb Stafford-Bloor
Explosive starts accelerated PSG past Liverpool, Aston Villa and Arsenal in the knockouts, and their two early strikes tonight quickly put the game to bed. It might sound simple, but consistently striking early in the knockout stages has helped them to seize control and throw their opponents' carefully laid game plans into disarray. Luis Enrique's side has now scored nine goals within the opening 20 minutes across their Champions League matches.
The immediate start looked inauspicious, though, as PSG booted the ball straight into touch from kick-off. But this is how they often start games in the Champions League and the PSG machine clicked into gear almost instantly, suffocating Inter with their pressing and relentlessly pulling them out of shape with fluid rotations.
Advertisement
Luis Enrique remarked that they 'scored the goal early playing the way we play' after Ousmane Dembele's early strike in the semi-final against Arsenal. The opening goal in Munich similarly showcased their free-flowing attacking philosophy. Vitinha slipped a delicate pass to Desire Doue on the left, who had drifted to the opposite flank, before squaring for right-back Hakimi, arriving in the box to tap home.
Beyond the obvious advantage of taking the lead, PSG's early goals provide the perfect platform to unleash their devastating counter-attacks — no side has scored more than their six on the break in this season's competition.
Inzaghi's side, unaccustomed to chasing games having trailed for only 16 minutes all tournament before the final, were forced to overcommit in search of an equaliser. That opened the door for PSG to launch a lightning-quick break just before the 20-minute mark, ending with Doue's deflected finish.
PSG have been quick out of the blocks throughout this Champions League campaign, and another blistering start tonight proved pivotal in sealing their first-ever title.
Conor O'Neil
As pretty as Paris Saint-Germain's opening goal was, Federico Dimarco's deep position clearly made it possible; Dimarco's decision to drop behind his own defensive line was fatal, playing Desire Doue onside and thereby opening up his own defence.
The habit of modern football is to damn players for any mistake. Especially when they are made in finals.
Big reactions, big clicks, big social media currency; that's the game. But it is worth remembering just how fast the game is at this level and how little time Dimarco had to make that decision. Surely he's due some empathy?
Remember this, too: making a cautious move in the opening minutes of a Champions League final, against a team loaded with attacking strength, who can move the ball quickly and with disguise is a very human thing to do — a natural act of self-preservation.
Advertisement
And the deflection for the second: given the state of the handball law, players can be forgiven for taking that kind of stance when facing a shot, assuming a position that could survive even a split-second-by-split-second VAR replay.
He just got unlucky and, again, that's something that can befall any player on any occasion.
Seb Stafford-Bloor
You have to say it was pure class from Achraf Hakimi. The timing, the composure, the presence of mind, all on the grandest stage of all. No doubt about it. That was one of the all-time great non-celebration celebrations. The finish wasn't bad either.
Can you blame Hakimi? After all, whom among us can forget his 45 appearances for Inter during the 2020-21 season – some four years ago now – when he forged such an unshakeable bond with the Nerazzuri faithful as they sat watching behind-closed-doors game at home?
In all seriousness, it takes some real sangfroid to open the scoring just 12 minutes into a Champions League final and have the equanimity to not even look remotely happy about it, to hold your hands up in apology rather than start wildly windmilling.
Maybe you would've preferred Hakimi to celebrate properly, but perhaps he knew the beating that was coming for his former side. And you imagine the Inter fans were thankful for it by full time. It was the only moment of the night that anyone in Paris Saint-Germain shirt showed mercy.
Mark Critchley
I wonder what a PSG vs Barcelona final would have looked like? That's not to say that Inter did not deserve their place in Munich; they did, clearly.
But perhaps PSG-Barcelona would have taken on more of a basketball, back-and-forth feel, with each team trading stylish punches, in some sort of flair-off.
Advertisement
Maybe. PSG still win that game, though. It would be a mistake to say that they just overwhelmed Inter with their attacking ability when they controlled the game, too, and nullified all of the Italians' considerable threat. Where was Thuram? Where was Martinez? Where were Barella and Dumfries?
As Barcelona showed in the semi-final: they will always give their opposition a chance — either through naivety or imbalance. So, had they played PSG it might have been a more entertaining game, but such a streetsmart and talented team would surely have been too much for them too.
Seb Stafford-Bloor
We will bring you this after he has spoken at the post-match press conference.
We will bring you this after he has spoken at the post-match press conference.
Sunday, June 15: Atletico Madrid, Club World Cup group match (Pasadena Rose Bowl), 8pm UK, 3pm ET
Tuesday, June 17: Monterrey, Club World Cup group match (Pasadena Rose Bowl), 2am Weds UK, 9pm ET
(Header photo: Getty Images)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
27 minutes ago
- New York Times
Inside Paris chaos: Violence and disorder prove familiar footnote to historic game
Desire Doue's deflected shot had barely had time to nestle in the net before the first firework broke across the sky in the eastern Paris suburb of Montreuil. Here, as across the French capital, fans piled into bars and cafes, squeezed themselves onto beer-garden benches and crowded around televisions in their sitting rooms to witness Paris Saint-Germain's historic 5-0 annihilation of Inter in the Champions League final. Advertisement It was a success that had been a long time coming: five years since PSG's only previous appearance in the final, 14 years since the club's agenda-changing takeover by Qatar Sports Investments, 32 years since hated rivals Marseille had claimed France's first — and hitherto only — men's Champions League success. PSG may be a young football club, having only come into being in 1970, but their supporters, young and old, had been waiting for this moment their entire lives. Expectation had turned into tension in the days preceding the game and the nearer it came, the greater the tension grew. But then, in the blink of an eye, the tension was gone. Doue's goal made it 2-0 after only 20 minutes and when he added PSG's third goal with half an hour remaining, shortly to be followed by a fourth, and then a fifth, the cork came off the bottle, turning the entire city into a riot of booming fireworks, bright flares, honking car horns and deliriously celebrating fans. Very quickly, however, and well before the game in Munich had finished, a darker note crept into the celebrations as disturbing videos began to pop up on social media. Cars burning in the streets. Bus stops smashed. Groups of youths flooding across the Peripherique ring road, bringing traffic to a standstill. A young man violently robbed of his scooter. A cyclist left slumped in the road after being knocked from his Velib rental bicycle by a car. Shockingly graphic images showing the aftermath of a collision between a car and a group of people, this time in the south-eastern city of Grenoble, which left two people seriously injured. On the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, police deployed water cannon and tear gas to disperse supporters who attempted to break through crash barriers in order to reach the Arc de Triomphe at the top of the iconic cobbled street. Running battles between troublemakers and members of the CRS, France's notorious riot police, continued throughout the night. Advertisement 'We arrived on the Champs and we saw the first lines of CRS,' says Mathieu Faurie, who was out watching the celebrations and witnessed some of the disorder first-hand. 'We got to the first shops and some people started smashing the windows in Foot Locker. Behind us, the police started tear-gassing people, so there was a moment of panic and everyone started running towards the top of the street. 'It started to get chaotic everywhere. There were crowds of people surging this way and that. People were trying to leave but the cops weren't letting people down the side streets — you had to walk back down the street towards the Place de la Concorde. 'It took a long time to get out and that killed the atmosphere a bit but we carried on towards Grands Boulevards, where there were loads of people, and it was much better.' At Place de la Bastille, east of the city centre, fans massed in their thousands to celebrate PSG's triumph. But a journalist from the German newspaper BILD reported having had to take shelter at the back of a restaurant after it came under attack from rioters. 'Paris made it 4-0. Again, there was great cheering. But this turned into hatred,' wrote Torsten Rumpf. 'The guests in the restaurant were attacked with fireworks and bottles, chairs and tables were thrown. Windows were broken. Fights broke out. 'I saw children and young women crying and heard loud screams. The air became stuffy with the smoke from the fireworks. After 10 minutes, the security guards brought the situation under control.' The French authorities reported that 491 arrests were made in Paris during the night of the game. Paris prefect of police Laurent Nunez told a press conference that 192 members of the public and nine police officers had been injured. In Paris, a 23-year-old scooter rider was killed after being hit by a car, while in the southwest town of Dax, a 17-year-old boy died after being stabbed in the chest. Investigations into both incidents are under way. Advertisement France's Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau posted on social media that 'barbarians have taken to the streets of Paris'. If it was a tragic footnote to append to a significant football match, it was also familiar. The following afternoon, a helicopter hovers in the overcast sky above the River Seine as PSG supporters exit the Invalides metro station and make their way across the Pont Alexandre III towards the Champs-Elysees for their team's triumphant trophy parade. Ousmane Toure, clad in a PSG home shirt and accompanied by his girlfriend, Angeline, had watched the match along with 45,000 fellow fans on the big screens at the Parc des Princes the night before. 'The atmosphere was incredible,' he says with a smile. 'Truly memorable.' But after setting out across Paris on his scooter after the game to revel in the festivities, he saw scenes that left him with memories that he will not look back on with any kind of fondness at all. 'I went out on the Periph (ring road) and it was a bit of a s*** show, to be honest,' he says. 'There were lots of people — I don't know where they'd come from — on motorbikes, blocking the traffic. They were trying to have a party but it wasn't very cool for the people in the cars. 'You'd go past certain streets and there were scenes of chaos. It was unfortunate because it gives a bad image of football and a bad image of the people of Paris. They should have been scenes of joy and they turned into scenes of horror.' On either side of the bridge, street vendors have opportunistically set up stalls offering refrigerated drinks. Cars speed past honking their horns, some twirling PSG flags and scarves from their windows, while youngsters in small groups nimbly dart and weave their way through the crowds on bicycles. Although the atmosphere is relaxed and festive, the sound of police sirens and the whir of the helicopter's blades serve as reminders that the authorities remain on high alert. Advertisement Eliot Nivet, strolling across the bridge with his friend, Pierre-Francois Kerbrat, says that the scenes that had marred the previous evening's celebrations were simply par for the course. 'It started kicking off during the match, which shows it can't have been connected to real supporters,' he says. 'We went to the Champs after and I was there from 11 o'clock until two in the morning. There were fires, like there always are; bikes that were set on fire but nothing out of the ordinary. 'Then the police did their job. There was a fair amount of tear gas. There were just loads and loads of people in every street. There was so much fervour and it's difficult to contain. We're not worried about today.' Arriving on the Right Bank of the Seine on Sunday, police have blocked off Avenue Winston Churchill, which leads straight to the Champs-Elysees. Three dark-grey police vans are parked across the street. Beside one of them, a black-clad police officer eyes the small crowd that has formed beside the crash barriers and mutters something into his walkie-talkie. The supporters there seem more concerned about missing the parade than inadvertently wandering into a riot. There were further skirmishes between supporters and riot police shortly before the trophy procession, as reported by L'Equipe. The clashes continued during Sunday evening, with Reuters reporting that police deployed tear gas when dozens of ticketless fans sought to enter the security perimeter, and again after supporters threw fireworks at police as the stadium emptied out. It was something of an achievement that it was even allowed to take place at all. Mindful of the scenes of serious disorder that had marred a previous PSG trophy parade in 2013 at the Place du Trocadero, which overlooks the Eiffel Tower, Paris authorities were initially minded to reject the club's request before being persuaded into performing a U-turn. Advertisement To cite a more recent example, Liverpool supporters will not need reminding of the carnage that took place before and after the 2022 Champions League final at the Stade de France, where fans were kettled and tear-gassed by police prior to the game, and then picked off by opportunistic muggers as they left the stadium afterwards. Patrick Mignon, a sports sociologist and author, says that eruptions of violence around sporting events in Paris reflect the underlying mistrust that exists between the police and disaffected young people from the city's disadvantaged suburbs. 'When you get events like this, which bring masses of people into the streets, they're an opportunity for people to display the tensions that exist within French society and the phenomenon of political polarisation,' he says. 'The conflict between young people from working-class neighbourhoods and the police is an old story. We also had riots here in 2022 and 2005. Paris is the place where all the tensions within French society are focused. 'We also know that any event that brings lots of people into the streets for a party also attracts young people who see these events as opportunities for all kinds of criminal activity: looting shops, pickpocketing, seeking confrontations with other young people or provoking the police.' Even at the most glorious moments in France's footballing history, tragedy has seldom been far away. After the great Saint-Etienne squad of the mid-1970s returned from beating Dutch side PSV in the European Cup semi-finals in 1976, one of the fans who rushed onto the runway at Boutheon airport to greet them was killed by the plane's propellers. When crowds flocked to the Champs-Elysees to celebrate France's victory over Brazil in the 1998 World Cup final, a panicked driver drove her car into a crowd at the Arc de Triomphe, killing one person and injuring 35. Two men died in different areas of France during the celebrations that followed Les Bleus' triumph at the 2018 World Cup, which also prompted scenes of violent disorder on the Champs-Elysees. Advertisement Of course, excessive celebration, enormous crowds of people and alcohol have proven to be a deadly combination after all manner of sporting events across the world. But as they sweep away the broken glass and patch up the wounded in Paris, there is no shrugging off a troubling sense of deja vu. (Header photo:)
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
French police detain dozens after football celebrations
French authorities detained 79 people in the second such wave of arrests during celebrations following Paris Saint-Germain's football Champions League win, a police chief said Monday. The PSG thrashed Inter Milan by a record 5-0 in Saturday evening's final in Munich, flying back to Paris on Sunday for a triumphal parade along the Champs Elysees, then celebrations in a packed Parc des Princes stadium on the edge of the French capital. The PSG winning the biggest prize in European club football for the first time sparked delirious festivities in France, but was marred by violence. On Sunday, "we saw a resurgence of individuals driven by malicious intent who were not really PSG supporters," Paris police chief Laurent Nunez told RTL radio. "We arrested 79 people, some of them in the night," he said, adding that order had been restored before dawn. Some were detained over taking barriers and briefly blocking the ring road around Paris, while others had tried to vandalise businesses or fired fireworks on the Champs Elysees, he said. On Saturday night, police had made more than 500 arrests across France, the interior ministry said, after more than 200 cars were torched and police clashed with youths. In the southwest town of Dax, a 17-year-old boy died after being stabbed in the chest. A 23-year-old man riding a scooter in central Paris also died after being hit by a vehicle. A policeman was in an induced coma after being injured by a firework. Receiving the triumphant team at the Elysee palace on Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron condemned what he called "unacceptable" violence during the festivities. Many of the stars of the team, one of the youngest in the competition, are drawn from the huge football talent pool in the Paris suburbs after PSG's Qatari owners turned their back on the policy of signing star players like Neymar and Lionel Messi. A total of 11.5 million people tuned in across France to watch the match. mca/ah/yad
Bloomberg
36 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
EU Poised to Curb China's Access to Medical Device Procurement
The European Union is set to curb Chinese medical device manufacturers' access to public procurement contracts in the bloc, according to a person familiar with the matter. EU countries are due to vote on the proposed measure as early as Monday, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
