Why the Champions League is just the start for PSG's new breed of winners
In the afterglow of victory, Luis Enrique exchanged his trademark black top for a T-shirt bearing the message 'Champions of Europe'. So did many another. The temptation is to wonder that Paris Saint-Germain got them printed in 2011, when Qatar Sports Investments bought the club, and had them stored in a cupboard in the Parc des Princes ever since.
An ambition was finally realised in Munich; impressively so. After the annual collapses, the near misses, the late goals from Sergi Roberto and Marcus Rashford came the cathartic 5-0 demolition of Internazionale, one of the genuine aristocrats of European football humiliated by the nouveaux riches with designs on becoming part of the establishment.
It transpired that Arne Slot was ahead of the curve in calling PSG the best team in Europe. Over the subsequent months, many another reached that conclusion, too. The club who used to choke at the business end of the Champions League peaked when it mattered most; in itself, that is proof of the transformative impact of Luis Enrique. His cultural revolution has entailed ending the search for proven winners and building a young side who instead won.
But it can be difficult to shed a club's identity. There was something quintessentially PSG about last season's 4-1 battering at Newcastle, or their semi-final defeat to Borussia Dortmund, when they hit the woodwork so often it needed a concussion test, but did not find the net. This year felt more of the same. Some 50 minutes into their seventh group game, PSG were – somehow – 2-0 down to Manchester City, outside the top 24, facing the ignominy of their worst European campaign under Qatari ownership.
It instead became the best. PSG's modern Champions League history has been an extended exercise in schadenfreude. In Germany, home of the concept, the startlingly brilliant display of Desire Doue could not camouflage who was missing: Kylian Mbappe. It is no coincidence PSG finally won the Champions League without Lionel Messi, Neymar and Mbappe. There wasn't a superstar shortcut to glory.
It is instructive if there will be an annual procession to it now. It is easy to predict so after a final, yet such forecasts often do not stand the test of time. Manchester City's 2023 triumph did not herald several more: if they regain the trophy, it will be with a very different team. In the last dozen years, only Real Madrid have won more than one Champions League. Right now, however, PSG look far better placed than many another supposed contender – City, Inter, Bayern Munich – to be celebrating again in Budapest next summer.
What can be said without fear of contradiction is that PSG are young enough. They will have the resources. What may be pertinent is that they seem to have turned a deficiency – the ease with which they win Ligue Un – into an advantage. For years, the theory was that it did not properly prepare them for Champions League summit clashes. Yet time on the training ground with Luis Enrique and the physicality to blitz opponents can do that.
PSG should see a future in their magnificent midfield. It is frightening how good Doue is even before his 20th birthday. If they can conjure more goals from the compelling Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, he will seem unstoppable. It may mean that questions instead surround their unlikely talisman. Luis Enrique argued Ousmane Dembele should win the Ballon d'Or for his defensive work alone. But after 28 goals in five years, can Dembele have another 33-goal season or was this the most wondrous of one-offs?
PSG's new striker-less model suggests that, whatever the answer, Luis Enrique will want wingers who can interchange positions and runners who can work. It helps, too, that PSG no longer overlook the cradles of talent that are Paris or Ligue Un. Doue was bought from Rennes, Bradley Barcola from Lyon. It proved a better business model than raiding the Nou Camp, beyond getting the transformative manager who is a Barcelona alumnus and who became the seventh manager to win the competition with two different clubs. He altered the ethos. PSG stopped copying and found their own way.
In one respect, they helped remedy a historical imbalance: this was just a second European Cup win for a French club. In another, they are a global club who have ruined the competitiveness of Ligue Un. It is the fifth domestic league in Europe, but a distant fifth. With its diminishing television rights, and broadcasters struggling to make it pay, other clubs can be financially challenged, often forced to sell.
And yet the initial French surge in the Champions League this season came from the relatively impoverished. PSG underachieved in the group stages. The rest overachieved. Lille defeated Real and Atletico Madrid, Monaco beat Barcelona and Aston Villa. Brest took more points than Juventus and City.
But they were beaten 10-0 on aggregate by PSG when the force from the capital gelled. Then PSG took aim across the English Channel, eliminating Liverpool and Villa and Arsenal. The Italian challengers from Inter were then vanquished, PSG's arc of triumph complete.
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