We watched PSG win Champions League final with a professional head coach – here's what we learned

New York Times

2 days ago

'They've scored five goals, but the defensive work was the key thing that won the game,' says Ian Cathro, verging on cliche.
Paris Saint-Germain had just beaten Inter 5-0 in Munich, the biggest winning margin in a Champions League final but, while everyone marvelled at Desire Doue's brilliance, PSG's positional rotations and Vitinha's midfield orchestrating, Cathro's focus was elsewhere.
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UEFA Pro Licence coaches watch the game differently. It's their job.
Cathro — once an assistant to Nuno Espirito Santo at Rio Ave, Valencia, Wolverhampton Wanderers (where he coached PSG's Vitinha), Tottenham Hotspur and Al-Ittihad — this season led top-tier Portuguese side Estoril to their best finish in nine years.
They forced the most offsides of any Primeira Liga team, ranked fourth for ball recoveries and sixth for final-third tackles. No wonder he admires PSG's out-of-possession approach.
'PSG's pressure has taken Inter out of their normal routines with the ball, and that's the thing that helps you grow into a final. When the magnitude of the game is higher, routines are more important. They've taken that away from them completely,' he says.
'Inter have a lot of mobility if you don't press the first ball circulation, but they can't get into funky positions if you start pressing them straight away — because they have to hold their spaces to take on that pressure.'
He spots a detail with Achraf Hakimi's pressing on 23 minutes, just after PSG's second goal. 'As he was starting to run, he went three metres inside and stopped them slamming forward to a striker, forcing the ball to the wing-back (white arrow). That's when you know they've nailed the work, to stop those inside line passes (yellow arrow), they've never been unbalanced.'
'PSG are trying to press the ball outside and around. The break point would be if you were able to get the ball to the side and go diagonally in.'
Inter could not in this instance. Joao Neves is too tight to Henrikh Mkhitaryan while Hakimi's pressure and readjustment blocks any inside pass, forcing Federico Dimarco long.
Inter No 9 Lautaro Martinez has dropped deeper to try and support, with PSG centre-back Marquinhos staying touch-tight.
Dimarco targets his strike partner, Marcus Thuram.
Neves recovers and Willian Pacho closes Thuram to make a two-v-one for PSG. Neves tackles the France international.
'It's a lot of work,' Cathro says on coaching a high press. 'It's the most difficult bit to get to perfection. You're playing against highly proficient technical players with their own ideas.'
When an almost identical pressing pattern happens eight minutes later, Cathro's praise switches to Vitinha. Dimarco is forced long once more, this time on his right foot, and Vitinha stays tight to Martinez before ducking as he reads that the striker won't be able to make the flick-on. The ball runs through to Marquinhos.
'What he has done there is excellent. Not competing for that ball, not letting that ball land, and now they can turn it into possession. PSG's pressing — the little details — has been really good.'
In the second half, he lauds Ousmane Dembele for forcing Inter goalkeeper Yann Sommer to kick long. 'So if he has to go and lift it, he's lifting it either across his body and he has to do it early — because you'll get close to his right foot — or you force him on his left.'
Against PSG's press, Sommer hit nearly 43 per cent of passes long (his season average is 28 per cent in Serie A and the Champions League). Luis Enrique's side made the first contact on half of his long passes.
One sequence, with PSG 4-0 up on 77 minutes, makes Cathro say 'wow' (none of the goals did). As Inter recycle into the middle from the right wing against a PSG low block, Vitinha presses substitute Kristjan Asllani when he receives Darmian's sideways pass.
Cathro pointed out the mid-block pressing trigger in the first half: 'The ball going from one side to the other and then backwards. The PSG back-line gets as high as they can, which, compared to gradually dropping, changes so much.'
Within three seconds, five PSG players have committed to press and centre-back Francesco Acerbi is facing his own goal — Dembele is on top of him.
Inter end up playing all the way back to Sommer, PSG lock on and Dembele presses him into kicking long.
Luis Enrique's side have stepped up so quickly that they catch Martinez offside. Five PSG players — including incoming substitute Lucas Hernandez — have already got their hands up appealing.
I ask Cathro if he would clap or praise that same press from his Estoril side. 'Yeah, I'm rewarding that. I know it's not a goal, but that really needs to be rewarded because that's the intensity, concentration, and maintaining the focus. You know that that has such an impact on the opponent as well. It takes a lot away from them.'
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'I don't remember a situation where Inter have actually been able to pass feet-to-feet centrally while PSG have been pressing. PSG have really worked hard at taking away those lines inside, and they've forced predictable circulations of the ball, meaning they've been able to get closer and closer, force mistakes and regains. Their work against the ball has been exceptional.'
His first-half critique of Inter is that they were 'close to passive'. He finds using the word as an absolute 'really offensive. It's not nice, but it was in that direction.'
PSG completed over 100 passes inside the first 15 minutes — three sequences of 10+ passes — and Inter only recorded two tackles and two interceptions, content to slide and shuffle in their 5-3-2 block.
Cathro's analysis was that Inter were 'actively trying to trap the ball on one side. They're sitting, they're allowing a fair bit. When somebody allows you to do something, that's because they're planning to do something to you.
'We've not seen one Inter counter-attacking situation from established PSG attacks. They regained it on the midfield line and slammed it forward to the two strikers once.
'They switched it to the right side and you thought, 'OK, maybe this is the counter that they're looking for'. They've not had a possession that's forced PSG to drop back into shape once.
'If they want to try and trap us on the same side, then I'd (PSG) be looking to repeat (attack again) that side with a different movement or a different mobility — try and profit from their plans.'
'Same side' is a phrase Cathro repeats a lot when talking about attacks, explaining how PSG reworked the situation down the left to create the cutback from Doue to Hakimi for the opening goal.
Acerbi steps forward when Fabian Ruiz passes backwards to Vitinha. This makes space for a through ball to Doue, and the domino effect is that Dimarco (having played Doue onside) scrambles across to cover. He was marking Hakimi and ends up neither stopping the full-back nor blocking the cutback, and the Moroccan taps in.
Quarter-final goal ✅Semi-final goal ✅Final goal ✅
Achraf Hakimi gives PSG an early lead in the Champions League final, but refuses to celebrate against his former side Inter ⚽
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Cathro likes the word 'mobility' to describe full-backs and wingers interchanging, and says it is important, 'especially against a back three. When the outside centre-backs start to feel that they lose their references (for marking) — because there's a certain distance where they feel like, 'I'm controlling this one' and then there's the point where they're not controlling anyone directly — that creates that little gap'.
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What would he have done if he were Simone Inzaghi? He caveats that 'there's definitely a non-tactical element in this,' and that a 'limited number of impactful things can happen'. The 38-year-old speaks from experience, having been Nuno's assistant at Rio Ave in May 2014 when they lost two domestic cup finals to Benfica and were behind at half-time in both.
Tactically, his focus would be to 'get another player in the middle and try and force the middle of the pitch. See if that just forces PSG to have more doubts when they're pressing. Because if they have to run too far away from the middle or all midfielders need to be engaged in pressure, they may not feel comfortable, knowing that there's two strikers behind'.
He points out it takes 27 minutes for a pass to stick from the back line into a striker — from Sommer looping a drop-kick into Thuram — before Inter work a wide triangle with two midfielders combining to put Denzel Dumfries into a crossing position. PSG cleared it but Thuram and Martinez were two-v-two in the box.
Twelve of Inter's 19 crosses came from the right, and Cathro spots a pattern on 28 minutes that kept creating crossing positions down the right.
'That's two maybe, three times, that diagonal in-to-out run down the right has been made. PSG haven't been close enough to it and the cross has been possible. A lot of teams, when they're closer to their box in that situation, don't send the centre back — they send the midfielder.
'If Inter get into that position and are high enough up, that diagonal run for the ball down the line might leave a player free because the centre-back isn't going to want to come.'
His less tactical solution owes to 'the Scottish part of my psyche. The Inter team — older, more experienced, more years, they can see the goal (trophy) — I'm surprised that there's not been a bigger kind of physical moment to try and reset the order of the game a little bit'.
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Just getting to a higher position and staying there, having five minutes of more intensity, get against them, hit them. Sometimes you lose a ball higher up, somebody slips away and you go, 'You're going on the ground, my friend'. Create maybe a little bit of chaos.
'Get the referee involved in the game, from the point of view that you've got the experience to handle that and provoke them a little bit. Remind them that football has got other things to it — not everything is how you build up and how you press.'
Cathro starts thinking about his half-time team talks from no earlier than 41 minutes in. In Luis Enrique's position, he says he would be demanding more 'same-side work, rather than trying to get around to the opposite side'.
Inzaghi, Cathro thinks, should call on desperate measures in desperate times. 'Rip the piece of paper up and start again. I'd be adapting completely and I'd be going on top of them.
'He knows a point must come where this game has to be provoked in a completely different way.
'Inzaghi knows, if his team gets a little bit more unstable, you shoot (for a comeback) too soon and it rebounds, the game's over'.
With the score unchanged at 60 minutes, PSG start to drop deeper and Cathro says his focus would be on pressing, 'because right now you're fighting the beginning of a comeback. Everything's got to come out (physically) in the next three to five minutes'.
There are two minor, ultimately inconsequential moments, first from Joao Neves and then Nuno Mendes, which he quickly verbalises a dislike for.
'That would piss me off — Neves tried to half-volley a pass in behind. Because those little things could be like a virus. I'd be losing my voice making sure he looked at me for eye contact for a split second.'
My head is actually in my notebook on 76 minutes because PSG goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma has just caught an inswinging Inter corner and is laying on the ball.
'Nuno Mendes has just slapped an awful pass across the pitch, which would send me insane,' Cathro says. I look up and rewind. Under no real pressure, he underhit a Hollywood pass to substitute Bradley Barcola, and Inter are attacking again.
But PSG are 4-0 up. Cathro says 'the game is over'. Why does it matter?
'You're trying to stay on top of this. You don't want s*** decisions to slip in, you don't want arrogance, you don't want the lack of concentration, you don't s****y bouncing passes. You want to be on it.
'I want 10 minutes of clean, controlled, stand-tall, chest-out, 'We are the champions, we will play that way'. No s***, don't want any s***e. It finishes 4-0.'
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Only once does he take any real pleasure from an attacking action: Vitinha on 62 minutes when he sprints over to take a free kick short in PSG's own half. He plays one-twos with Hakimi and Marquinhos, the latter finding him with his back to goal against the press, and the No 6 turns before he splits Inter with a pass to Dembele's feet.
Then he runs on to complete another one-two from Dembele's backheel, and threads through Doue with PSG on a three-v-two overload.
The pass is so well weighted that the teenager, sprinting, can finish one-touch past Sommer at the near post.
It's Desire Doue's world and we're just living in it 🌟
The 19-year-old makes it two goals and an assist in the Champions League final 🔥
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— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) May 31, 2025
Presumably owing to the coaching Cathro gave Vitinha when he was on loan at Wolves in 2020-21?
'No, it's not! He'd done that himself, that goal,' he responds, enthusing about 'the intensity in all of his positioning and all of his actions and all his asks for the ball, deep in his own half, to then decide, 'I'll actually run forward'. It changed everything. I thought, 'Why are you running forward?'
'Technically, he had all of those things when he was at Wolves. The intensity he didn't have, or the taking responsibility aspect. It was just going through time. We didn't really do much for him.
'He certainly would have wanted a lot more out of his time at Wolves — you're a really talented kid that comes through an academy, always winning, always playing, then you arrive at a club and Joao Moutinho and Ruben Neves are the two midfielders, so you're not playing. They're playing, and it's as simple as that. Because they're better.
'But it was an important year for him. He probably needed the difficulty and the sort of realisation of how difficult it is, and that's probably what happened. He grew up a lot, it got him ready for when he went back to Porto and he really excelled.'
Cathro summarises it as 'a game where a team playing fearless and being themselves outdoes the more wise, strategic approach — I think that's healthy for football.
'PSG finally winning with this team is also healthy. A young, hungry, obviously highly talented, high-potential team, that functions a lot more as a team.'
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When the camera cuts to a crestfallen Inzaghi, I ask if coaches naturally empathise with others in those difficult moments. 'Everybody watching this game knows that this is a good Inter team and a fully-grown man who knows exactly what he's doing — he doesn't need anybody's pity.'
It is not unempathetic but the cut-throat realism that elite coaches need. 'It's been a game of football and it's fallen to a certain side because of maybe three or four things. You're on the wrong side of it today, mate. Life goes on.'
What does he reckon Inzaghi's thinking right before the final whistle?
'I'm wanting the press conference to finish and I want to go on holiday.'