MUNICH — Paris Saint-Germain won their first-ever Champions League title by humiliating Inter Milan with a rampant 5-0 victory on Saturday.
PSG completed a league, cup and Champions League treble on a night when 19-year-old forward Désiré Doué announced himself to the world with a two-goal performance.
Who needs Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé when you have Doue? PSG know the answer to that one having finally ended their wait to win the Champions League with the team built with star youngsters rather than their expensive superstars.
Achraf Hakimi‘s 12th-minute opener set PSG on their way before Doue’s double and goals from Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Senny Mayulu completed the most lopsided winning margin in Champions League final history. And the flipside for Inter, who lost a second final in three seasons, is that they are now the team that suffered the biggest-ever defeat in this showpiece game.
With the win, PSG manager Luis Enrique becomes the second manager in history to win the treble with two different teams after Pep Guardiola. — Mark Ogden
Inzaghi’s Inter had a plan — until PSG punched back
Mike Tyson was right. Best-laid plans go to waste when the unexpected happens.
Inter Milan manager Simone Inzaghi’s set-up suggested Inter would absorb PSG’s front-foot start (similar to the one that rattled Arsenal at the Parc des Princes) and then settle into the game.
That’s when, it was hoped, PSG’s press would get a little less tidy, allowing Inter to (1) play through it and start keeping the ball in midfield, or (2) count on Alessandro Bastoni‘s diagonal to Denzel Dumfries to release Marcus Thuram and Lautaro Martínez two-on-two with PSG’s central defenders. Ideally, they would get set-pieces and exploit those too, given their physical and size edge over PSG.
Except within 20 minutes, Inter were two-nil down. And everything got that much harder. A midfield that was already rattled could muster little possession and even less creativity. At two-nil up, PSG could devote resources to neuter Inter’s wingbacks and deny service to Inter’s front two.
At that point, unless they snatched a goal before the half (and they didn’t, Thuram’s header went wide) it was hard to see how Inzaghi was going to change it. Because, truth be told, Inter have very rarely been behind all season — coming into Saturday’s final, Inter trailed for only 8 minutes in the Champions League all season.
Inter had been through a lot, but had never been punched, and they didn’t know how to respond against PSG. — Gab Marcotti
Doué announces himself to the world (and as Lamine’s rival)
Back in September, Desiré Doué had never played in the Champions League in his life. Not a single second. At 19 years old, all he knew of the famous music from the premiere club competition in the world was watching these games on TV.
Nine months later, he is the king of Europe, shining in the final against Inter Milan with two goals and an assists. Unplayable, unstoppable, unfathomable, un-everything you want.
No other player in history has tallied at least a goal and an assist at such a young age in a Champions League final or European Cup ever.
There was a doubt before the final over who would start for PSG on the right wing, between him and Bradley Barcola. PSG manager Luis Enrique made the right choice as Doué ran circles this Inter Milan defence. Fede Di Marco couldn’t cope with him.
Doué’s assist on the first goal showed both exceptional vision and selflessness. His goal was deflected but he had the intention and the confidence to hit the ball like he did. His run and perfect finish for his second were sublime. His ball control is something special, inspired by his idol Neymar, and his tricks are a delight, like the one on Bastoni after an hour.
When Doué started at Rennes in Ligue 1 at 16 years old, his talent was obvious but he lacked consistency and output. PSG invested €50 million on him last summer because Luis Enrique was confident he could make him a world class player. There was work to do but the teenage was ready for it.
Back in October, he started against Arsenal in the league phase at the Emirates. Paris were outplayed, lost and Doué was anonymous. His dad after the game at the stadium told ESPN: “He was not good tonight but he will work even harder and will be ready soon for these kind of games.” The senior Doué was right. His son has become more than ready.
At this point, Doué’s rival for the best young player in the world is Barcelona‘s 17-year-old Lamine Yamal, and it will be a battle to watch for years to come.
In case you couldn’t speak French, “Désiré Doué” means literally “desired gifted” in English. You can’t make it up. What were you doing when you were 19? Désiré Doué was winning the Champions League. — Julien Laurens
Inter Milan freeze and end up humiliated
Inzaghi said before the game that his players had learned lessons from their 2023 Champions League final defeat against Manchester City and that they would be better for it against PSG. But he couldn’t have been more wrong as his side suffered a record-breaking 5-0 defeat.
Inter, despite their experience, were woeful and they froze on the biggest stage. All of their pre-match talk was hollow. They were 2-0 down before the halfway point of the first-half and that’s when the record books started to be dusted off because it was clear they were heading for a potentially historic defeat.
They had the biggest half-time deficit since Liverpool trailed 3-0 to AC Milan in 2005, but while Rafael Benitez’s team fought back to win that game on penalties, there was never any hint of an Inter comeback in Munich.
As PSG put their foot on the pedal in the second-half, that historic defeat came into view with the French champions going 4-0 up — and equalling the biggest Champions League final winning margin — with 17 minutes still to play. Bradley Barcola looked to have spared Inter a 5-0 defeat when he missed a good chance on 82 minutes, but substitute Senny Mayulu delivered the hammer blow four minutes later to cap one of the worst nights in Inter’s history. — Ogden
PSG’s youth and energy beat Inter’s experience, in an unexpected way
Ahead of the game, some stats stood out.
Inter, weren’t just the oldest team in the Champions League, they were also, at 29.4 years of age (by weighted minutes), the oldest in Europe’s Big Five leagues, ranking 96th out 96. PSG, on the other hand, at 23.6 years of age, were the second-youngest in the Big Five, only behind Strasbourg (which is more of a Chelsea youth subsidiary than a football club these days).
Another number was that PSG had covered an average of 112 kilometers per match to Inter’s 92, the highest and lowest totals respectively among Champions League clubs. And thus the stock narrative was largely about whether Inter could make their experience (their guys aren’t just older, they also played in more big matches) count or whether PSG could impose their superior freshness and athleticism.
So, it’s somewhat ironic that things played out the way they did on Saturday. Inter covered substantially more ground than PSG (111.7 to 104.4) — if perhaps often at a slower pace. That may be a function of going down early, sure, but also a sign of how well Luis Enrique’s team kept the ball.
Most of all, PSG’s first two goals came as a result of precisely the kind of errors that experience ought to safeguard against. Inter’s backline entirely misread Vitinha‘s through ball to Doué, ahead of the Hakimi opener. And Nicolò Barella‘s ill-advised decision to try to shepherd the ball out of play gave William Pacho the chance to recover it, which led directly to the PSG counter and Doué making it two-nil.
Experience is important, sure, but it doesn’t automatically mean you’re going to make the correct decisions. And on Saturday, it was PSG who looked like the accomplished, veteran side, not Inter. — Marcotti
Inter Milan can’t pressure PSG
Inter reached the Champions League final with quality over quantity — they were happy to absorb pressure and gave opponents all the poor shots they wanted to take in the name of preventing high-quality opportunities. But that’s not quite the same thing as saying they were passive in defense. They needed a certain level of successful aggression to succeed, even in the Champions League.
A quick stat for you: PPDA stands for passes per defensive action. It’s a pretty common measure of defensive pressure — it doesn’t necessarily say how well you defended, but it does a solid job of measuring activity levels. The super-pressing defenses out there will have a PPDA under 10; PSG, in fact, averaged 10.1 in the Champions League, fifth out of 36 teams. Inter didn’t need that level to succeed, but they needed something.
Heading into the final, Inter had allowed under 20 PPDA in nine Champions League matches. They had won all nine. When that number crept over 20 in five matches, they won just one with three draws.
In the first half against PSG, that number was 27.1. They just couldn’t get close enough to the ball to impact anything PSG wanted to do. Eight of 11 PSG starters completed at least 20 passes in the first half, and nine completed at least one progressive pass. They stretched and folded Inter’s defense at will.
PSG can develop an impatient streak if the ball doesn’t go into the net as quickly as they want it to, firing off long-distance shots, wasting chances and leaving themselves more vulnerable to counters. But with Achraf Hakimi scoring in the 12th minute, there was officially no danger of that.
PSG played with full confidence and precision. They pulled Federico Dimarco dreadfully out of position on the first goal. Ousmane Dembélé‘s assist on the second was so outrageously precise that it looked far easier than it was. So were his countless backheel passes throughout his 90 minutes.
Inter were unlucky that Doué’s shot was deflected on the second goal, but there wasn’t a single second in the first half in which Inter had any control over what PSG wanted to do. And in the second half, as Inter figured out ways to pressure the ball a bit more and tilt the pitch in their favor, it opened up a superhighway of lanes for counterattacking, and PSG ran up the score.
We’ve seen steely resolve beat arrogant speed enough in sports that it always feels like it was inevitable in retrospect when it happens. But sometimes that speed turns out to be inevitable instead. — Bill Connelly
PSG’s midfield carries them to success
Ask any coach and they will say that midfield is the area where games are won and lost and that, to win big, you simply have to dominate in that part of the field. If you want an example of that proving itself to be true, PSG gave it in emphatic style by utterly owning the midfield battle against Inter’s dismal line-up.
Inzaghi will have seen enough of PSG to know that Vitinha, João Neves and Fabián Ruiz have controlled games against Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City in the Champions League this season, so he should have been worried about the outcome of this game because his players were simply out of their depth against PSG’s outstanding midfield.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Nicolò Barella and Hakan Çalhanoglu against the PSG axis was a complete mismatch. They didn’t have the legs or creativity to come close to Luis Enrique’s players and PSG won the game because they had full control of the midfield. But maybe it is being harsh on Inter to say that they couldn’t lay a glove on PSG. Nobody has this season in the Champions League because Enrique has built a formidable midfield. — Ogden
