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It was a season to remember for Vitinha, Pierre Sage and Florian Thauvin but one to forget for Paul Pogba and Nice“I like feeling the match go through me,” said Vitinha at the end of December. It’s an apt way for the 26-year-old to interpret his role at PSG, given that everything the team produces on the pitch involves him in some way or another.He was the only PSG player to be a regular presence in the league and Champions League, missing only a handful of matches in April due to a heel injury. With Marquinhos having been spared for the Champions League from February onwards, the Portuguese midfielder often wore the captain’s armband in the second half of the campaign.PSG’s conductor-in-chief is equally at ease weaving through dense midfields as he is playmaking from a more withdrawn position. He has more often been seen in the latter role in league matches, given that the vast majority of the champions’ opponents set up conservatively.Before Ousmane Dembélé’s move to the centre, it was Vitinha’s retraining as a defensive midfielder that had proved the most impactful of Luis Enrique’s changes since arriving. The manager has rebuilt PSG as a collective unit, but it is Vitinha’s individual talents that allow the rest of the team to shine. RJIn less than three years, Pierre Sage has ascended from an unassuming, relegation-battling interim manager to being the most in-demand French coach on the market.Previously the head of Lyon’s academy, he was thrust into the spotlight in November 2023 when the club asked him to steer the senior side away from the bottom of the table. Sage went above and beyond, dragging them into Europe on the final day.Having been dismissed midway through the following season, the former goalkeeper was then hired by Lens last summer to replace Will Still. Once again, he made an immediate impact.In the 47-year-old’s first season in charge, Lens posed the most credible challenge to PSG’s dominance in years. While they ultimately fell short of winning the title, they did go on to lift the Coupe de France for the first time in their 120-year history.Built around high-intensity pressing, incisive counterattacks and the creative talents of Florian Thauvin, Lens were at times a devastating force in Ligue 1. Sage’s increasingly likely departure this summer, potentially across the Channel to Crystal Palace, will be a major setback for the club’s long-term plans. The opportunity to take on Pep Guardiola, one of his inspirations, will have to wait, however. RJExpectations were not exactly high when Lyon signed Afonso Moreira for €2m. He had just spent the season with the Sporting CP reserve side in Portugal’s third tier. Given the low fee, his lack of experience at the top level, and the presence of Malick Fofana on the left flank, Moreira was expected to play a bit-part role. But an injury to Fofana in the autumn provided Moreira an opportunity that he seized with both hands. He finished the season with 19 goal contributions (eight goals, 11 assists) in 37 appearances and as the standard-bearer of Lyon’s attack.The Portuguese winger’s performances were used as ammunition for Paulo Fonseca to ask more from Endrick. “We are relying on a player who was playing in Portugal’s third division a year ago and who is stepping up to the plate. If Afonso has that courage, the others must do the same. Endrick needs to be more involved,” said Fonseca in April.Beyond his efficiency in the final third, Moreira has stood out for his defensive work and his relentless running down the wing. “When I run, I feel happy,” he says. A very modern forward, Moreira’s breakout campaign suggests he has a bright future. LEIn his first season back in France after four years away, Florian Thauvin was the leading man in Lens’ history-making campaign. The former Marseille player thrived as the main creative force in the league’s hardest-working side. As the Lens player with the most consequential top-level experience, the 33-year-old also readily embraced a new role as one of the squad’s leaders.Operating from an attacking midfield role, the World Cup winner scored 14 goals in all competitions, registered 11 assists, and was named Ligue 1’s player of the month three times. It was in the team’s triumphant Coupe de France run where he shone brightest, though, managing one goal and one assist in every match from the quarter-finals onwards.“It’s one of the most beautiful stories of my career,” he said in April, pointing to the way he was instantly embraced by Lens’ fervent support. For the first time in his career, Thauvin has been entrusted with the starring role in a team. Lens’ faith was immediately repaid. His Ligue 1 performances also propelled him back into national team contention. A first call-up from Didier Deschamps in six years came in March, although he would ultimately not make the cut for France at the World Cup. RJNice’s season began all the way back on 6 August, when they played a Champions League qualifier against Benfica, and ended it in a post-season relegation playoff against Saint-Étienne, which they ultimately survived by the skin of their teeth. After setting a vague objective of obtaining some form of European football, expectations quickly dropped. Poor transfer dealings, linked to Ineos’ growing lack of interest in the club, put Nice on the back foot and had Franck Haise complaining about his inability to “create a group” and meet the objective set.Still, no one expected their fall to be so dramatic. Mediocrity was what fans feared in the autumn, but what they came to aspire to by the spring. The supporters had their hand in the dramatic decline, with their attack on the team bus in November ultimately eliciting Haise’s departure. There would be other exits in hierarchical positions, and the replacements only accentuated the negative trend.Claude Puel returned to the club in December, having not held a managerial role for five years. He didn’t do his chances of getting another job any favours; his interim spell will almost certainly come to an end in the summer. Their fans invaded the pitch on the final day of the regular season and were subsequently banned from the relegation playoff. When safety was finally secured, the supporters were not in attendance to celebrate it. “Celebrate” perhaps isn’t the right word for a season described as “catastrophic” by senior figures at the club. LEIf there was one moment when Ousmane Dembélé confirmed that last season was not a flash-in-the-pan, it was his chip against Lille in January. Fitness issues marred the Ballon d’Or winner’s start to the season, but he showed he hadn’t lost his goalscoring touch with an audacious and improvised effort.Receiving the ball on the edge of the box, he bided his time. Jinking back not once but twice, creating considerable distance between himself and the three Lille defenders around him, he mimicked a basketball player trying to tee up a three pointer. As well as his awareness of the onrushing defenders, he also spotted Berke Ozer being drawn off his line and pulled off a looping chip, leaving the retreating Ozer tangled in his netting and picking the ball out of his goal.Luis Enrique called it a “PlayStation goal”. The PSG manager added: “Everyone likes these kinds of goals, including me.” It is an effort that only narrowly eclipses another chip, this time from Folarin Balogun, who, sprinting behind the Marseille defence but being shepherded away from goal, threaded the hole of the needle with an unstoppable effort. His was more premeditated than Dembélé’s improv masterpiece. LELens had the two best goalkeepers in Ligue 1 this season. They made Robin Risser their No 1 when he arrived from Strasbourg last summer. He has since worked his way into the France squad for the World Cup, but to do so he displaced Hervé Koffi, subsequently sent out on loan to Angers. In many ways, he eclipsed Risser, albeit playing for a side that would finish mid-table.Koffi made the most saves in the top flight, had the highest number of prevented goals, the highest save percentage and 10 clean sheets. A spectacular shotstopper, he pulled off one of his finest in the match against Nice in March. Jonathan Clauss lined up a free-kick on the edge of the Angers box and, rather than putting it over the wall, he put it around the side. His curled effort, fiercely struck, was destined for the top corner if not for Koffi’s quick reflexes and strong left hand. That was his crowning moment in an exceptional season. Unseating Risser at Lens looks unlikely, but he has put himself in the shop window. LEExpecting Paul Pogba to return to the level that made him the most expensive player in the world was always unrealistic. It is unfair to expect as much of a player who, since 2022, has struggled to manage crippling injuries, been kidnapped in an extortion attempt involving his own brother, and missed 18 months due to a doping ban.It was his fitness concerns that dissuaded Marseille from making their move. Monaco CEO Thiago Scuro said he was “pretty confident” that Pogba “could bring a lot” and Pogba himself had designs on a return to the France squad for the World Cup. Those expectations were not met. He did not play until the end of November and made his first and only start for Monaco in May. With six games, 115 minutes, no goals and no assists, the much-anticipated PogBack has been a damp squib.Scuro said the deal was a “win-win”. The club only qualified for the Europa Conference League; Pogba failed in this quest to reach the France squad, and there are doubts about whether he will see out the deal. What was always a risky move has felt like a lose-lose. LEWhen PSG’s focus shifted to retaining the Champions League in spring, their key players were only called in for league action when necessary. The second Classique of the season, played at the start of February, was one of the last league matches to feature a full-strength PSG side. Marseille had beaten the Parisians at home for the first time in 14 years earlier in the campaign, one of several defeats Luis Enrique’s men suffered in an injury-hit autumn.This time, the southerners were subjected to a 5-0 humbling, the widest margin in the history of the cross-country rivalry. Ousmane Dembélé’s performance, which included a first-half double and an assist, kicked off his late-season resurgence after a patchy start to the campaign.The result did not have an immediate impact on the title race. However it showed just how devastating PSG can be when giving Ligue 1 their full attention. Marseille, meanwhile, plunged further into crisis in the wake of their Champions League exit and would not win again until the following month. RJIt was the moment on which Nice’s season turned, instigating the departures of two players, the president and the manager. After a defeat at Lorient in November, the Nice players returned to their training ground only to be greeted by an angry group of fans. On the short walk from the bus to the gates of the training ground, Jérémie Boga and Terem Moffi were attacked, while insults and spits were directed at sporting director Florian Maurice. Boga and Moffi were put on sick leave and would not play again until departing on loan (to Juventus and Porto, respectively) in January.Franck Haise, whose stock among Nice fans was still high at the time, said of the attack: “Some came in balaclavas with petanque balls.” The club’s sporting director Florian Maurice was particularly affected by the events: “In the moment, I wasn’t scared. It was after that I realised, once we were all inside. The days that followed were very hard. You run it over, you imagine a lot of things.” Maurice stayed at the club, unlike president Fabrice Bocquet, who left after the events, and Haise, who left one month later. LEIt took just over 90 minutes for Marseille’s season to begin unravelling. Shortly after their opening-day defeat in Rennes, the team’s performance was quickly overshadowed by a dressing room bust-up between Adrien Rabiot and Jonathan Rowe.The fight, which was described by (now-former) club president Pablo Longoria as “extremely violent”, led to both players leaving for Serie A after initially being excluded from the squad. The Frenchman moved to Milan and the England youth international joined Bologna. Both players had been an integral part of (now-former) manager Roberto De Zerbi’s plans.Sporadic descents into drama and chaos are not uncommon for Marseille but few incidents have needlessly hamstrung the squad as much as the sudden departure of two key players, creaking open the door to more internal chaos as the campaign went on. By the end of the season, Marseille had changed their manager, sporting director, president and several other backroom staff. They lost 11 league games and crashed out of the Champions League in spectacular fashion along the way.Consecutive wins at the very end of the season nevertheless saw Habib Beye’s men clinch an unlikely Europa League spot. Whether the new foundations are solid enough to make the most of that position next season remains to be seen. RJ4-3-3: Robin Risser; Nuno Mendes, Malang Sarr, Willian Pacho, Achraf Hakimi; Adrien Thomasson, Vitinha, Mamadou Sangaré; Matias Fernandez-Pardo, Esteban Lepaul, Florian Thauvin.Bench: Hervé Koffi, Matthieu Udol, Charlie Cresswell, Moussa Niakhaté, Saud Abdulhamid, Corentin Tolisso, Warren Zaire-Emery, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Joaquín Panichelli.This is an article by Get French Football News

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The origin of PSG’s largesse and the effect it’s had on their domestic game can’t be ignored, even as we appreciate the team’s stunning qualitySince 1990, only one side had ever successfully defended the Champions League – Real Madrid, who won three in a row between 2016 and 2018. Paris Saint-Germain’s victory in the final on Saturday elevates them to a new tier of the pantheon. No bad side has ever won the European Cup or Champions League, but only great sides have ever retained it.Arsenal pushed them much closer than Inter had in losing in the final the previous year, and there is always something slightly unsatisfying about a victory on penalties, but the quality of this PSG cannot be denied. They put six past Bayern in the semi-final – their superiority far greater than the one-goal aggregate margin would suggest. It was a similar story in the quarter-final, in which a 4-0 aggregate victory didn’t really reflect how much better they were than Liverpool. And while Chelsea may think they were slightly unlucky to lose the first leg of their last-16 tie away to PSG 5-2, the 3-0 result in the second leg was a devastating assertion of authority: three goals scored by an almost bored opponent apparently just as they felt like it.Although it’s the attacking verve that catches the eye, PSG also have a midfield that, particularly when Fabián Ruiz is available, is capable of controlling possession and stifling a game, just as the great Spain sides have done over the past couple of decades. In that sense Luis Enrique’s heritage as part of the great Barcelona team of the late 90s, when he played under Louis van Gaal and alongside Pep Guardiola, is clear. Luis Enrique now stands as one of the greats of European coaching: only Carlo Ancelotti has won more European Cups or Champions Leagues and only Bob Paisley, Zinedine Zidane and Guardiola have won as many as his three.As the world grapples with the end of the Guardiola consensus, Luis Enrique has perhaps found a model for the future. Allied to the technical quality and control in midfield, his sides display a thrilling directness wide – similar to that offered by Lamine Yamal and Nico Williams in the Spain side that won the Euros in 2024. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia may have supplanted Yamal as the best player in the world on form right now. Give him room to run into, as Bayern did too often, and there is an inevitability about the outcome. Arsenal did well to restrict him in the final, with Bukayo Saka doubling up with Cristhian Mosquera, but even then, Kvaratskhelia was the source of the PSG equalizer, the slightest hesitation and panicked response from Mosquera producing the penalty.Go toe to toe with PSG, as Bayern did, and Kvaratskhelia and Desiré Doué will inevitably revel in the space. Arsenal had little option but to sit deep and absorb pressure. While that may frustrate those who want all soccer to be like the first leg of PSG v Bayern, defending is also part of the game. With better forwards, the approach might even have worked for Arsenal. But they struggled late on, in part because Viktor Gyökeres could not hold the ball up, and in part because Noni Madueke could not replicate Saka’s quality of delivery from set plays. Even then, they were one small mistake from a 1-0 win; and even after that they lost because they twice missed the target in the shootout. The gameplan wasn’t the problem; a couple of minor details were.But however appealing PSG’s soccer, there are a couple of caveats. Firstly, their players are much fresher than those of most of their European rivals – Arsenal especially. David Raya, Declan Rice, Martín Zubimendi, Gabriel and William Saliba all played more than 2,500 minutes of league soccer this season, while a further four players played more than 2,000. Of PSG’s starting XI, only Vitinha played more than 2,000. And that’s before taking into account how much more demanding the Premier League is than Ligue 1: Wolves, Burnley and West Ham offer significantly more of a test than the French equivalent bottom three of Metz, Nantes and Nice.PSG’s wage bill is roughly double that of the next highest in France, Marseille, and more than 10 times that of Le Havre, the lowest in Ligue 1. Their wealth has effectively destroyed the domestic circuit as a contest, and the source of that wealth should never be forgotten. It’s 15 years now since Qatar Sports Investment bought PSG and, having finally realized that celebrity soccer players are rarely the way to (on-field) success, they have the sort of team they must have dreamed of. All 10 outfield players started the last two finals and, with only two of them 30 or older and five 25 or under, there’s no reason they should not continue to be successful for a long while yet.The question, though, is at what cost, both to the balance of the French league, and to any notion that soccer may yet retain some sort of community or spiritual value, rather than simply being the propaganda tool of an autocratic state.This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he’ll answer the best in a future edition.

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Analysts trace illegal views to 3.7m IP addresses in UKChampions League final watched legally by more than 7mArsenal’s Champions League final defeat by Paris Saint-Germain attracted more than 16.2m views on illegal streams in the UK after not being made free-to-air.Analysis conducted for the Guardian by the technology analyst Gaming Compliance International (GCI) shows there were 16.2m illegal stream views of longer than 90 seconds, traced to 3.7m unique IP addresses. The final was watched legally on TNT Sports and HBO Max by more than 7 million people.TNT sparked a political row with its controversial decision not to make the final available free-to-air for the first time since the tournament’s rebrand as the Champions League in 1992, with Sir Keir Starmer writing to the broadcaster urging it to reconsider.TNT is understood to have been happy with its combined linear and streaming viewing figures of more than 7 million and 25.6% audience share, but the large numbers who watched illegally will be a major long-term concern for it and all broadcasters, as well as for TV rights owners such as Uefa and the Premier League.The absence of free-to-air coverage appears to have been a factor in the large numbers watching illegally. The 2022 Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid, which BT Sport streamed for free on YouTube, attracted a peak audience of 12.6m.The exact size of the illegal audience is impossible to discern because there is likely to have been more than one viewer for many of the 3.7m unique streams, and some viewers will have accessed more than one stream owing to technological problems and forced refreshing because of advertising, which explains the 16.2m figure.There is a large overlap between the piracy of premium sports rights and unlicensed gambling, highlighted by the fact that 89% of adverts on illegal streams of the Champions League final were for gambling brands not licensed in the UK.“A dark nexus has existed between illegal streaming and unregulated gambling since the pandemic, when unregulated gambling approached illegal streaming to create fake sports and gambling events to make up for the lack of professional sports at that time,” GCI’s president, Ismail Vali, told the Guardian.“Now, as markets shift with changing sports rights and rising costs for consumers, illegal streaming has become part of a new arms race for illegal gambling. They are using ‘free sports streaming’ as a unique selling point in their war against regulated gambling operators.”TNT stood its ground and made the final available only on the subscription channels TNT Sports and HBO Max, although monthly packages for the latter start at £4.99. Industry sources said the audience there would have been higher had Uefa not brought forward the kick-off from 9pm in Budapest to 6pm, to make life easier for match-going fans.TNT’s viewing figures for the final rose from about 4.5m for PSG’s 5-0 thrashing of Inter last year owing to the presence of an English club but declined in France because of the earlier kick-off time.TNT disclosed that more than 9.2 million people watched at least one of the three Uefa men’s finals, with 3.5m watching Aston Villa’s Europa League win and 2.7m viewing Crystal Palace’s Conference League triumph. Its average audience for European football was up 5% from last season.Starmer, an Arsenal fan, made a second public plea for the Champions League final to be made available for free in a joint statement with the Football Supporters’ Association.TNT had made the past two Champions League finals available for free on discovery+, and the previous rights holder, BT Sport, streamed them for free on YouTube.Before BT Sport bought the rights, Champions League finals had been live on ITV, which had exclusive rights from the competition’s launch, as the rebranded European Cup, until 2003, then joint rights with Sky Sports until 2015.

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To better highlight the whole field among Europe’s elite, we chose an XI that couldn’t feature more than one player from any one teamThis year we are picking a team of the season with a difference: I am allowed only one player per team. Of course, as finalists Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal have players with claims to all of these positions, so apologies to Willian Pacho and Declan Rice, among others. But what this format does allow for is an overall view of the Champions League season that was.Even as Arsenal lost the final’s penalty shootout to PSG in Budapest, Raya was heroic, making a save from Nuno Mendes. During the game itself, Raya’s decision-making was up to the standards of his exemplary season. He closed out the Champions League campaign with nine clean sheets, having conceded just five goals in 14 matches. Robert Andrich’s header from a corner for Bayer Leverkusen was the last non-penalty to beat Raya in the competition, and it came in the round of 16.Yes, a Spurs player made the cut. Remember Thomas Frank? A decent record in Europe served as a fig leaf for the Dane’s unpopular regime. Spurs managed to finish fourth in the group stage, and Porro’s skills as an overlapping full-back were to the fore, such that he has recently been linked with a return to Manchester City, where he spent three years as part of the club’s loan army.Although this season will be remembered as the one where Bastoni’s red card in the playoff against Bosnia wrecked Italy’s chances of making the World Cup, he remains his nation’s best defender. Inter, runaway Serie A champions, remained stingy in defence in the Champions League, conceding just seven in the group stage, with Bastoni as their organiser and deep-lying playmaker.The Norwegian club from the Arctic Circle were the romantic story of the season, beating Manchester City, Atlético Madrid and Inter before surprisingly losing heavily to Sporting in the last 16. If Jens Petter Hauge was the headline maker off the left wing, it was a defence led by Bjørtuft that laid the foundations. He ranked third in ball recoveries, on 81, behind only PSG’s Mendes and Pacho.Left-back: Matteo Ruggeri (Atlético Madrid)Another Italian, and a player who represents the latest stage of Diego Simeone’s dynasty at Atlético. Ruggeri set up Alexander Sørloth’s goal in a crucial quarter-final first-leg win at Barcelona, helping the club to the semis for the first time since 2016-17. Ruggeri, who joined Atleti from Atalanta last summer, is very much a Simeone player; a defender first and foremost. He was assigned to Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal in that quarter-final and lived to tell the tale even when the teenager was showing off his full array of tricks.Defensive midfielder: Morten Hjulmand (Sporting)Though they surrendered their Portuguese title, Sporting had a fine Champions League season, finishing in the top eight of the group stage among five English teams, Bayern Munich and Barcelona. Their Danish captain was at the fulcrum, though he was sorely missed for the first leg of an attritional two-legged quarter-final with Arsenal. Hjulmand is set to be heavily featured in summer transfer talk as a midfielder of poise and tenacity.Central midfielder: Aleix García (Bayer Leverkusen)Leverkusen’s run to the last 16 was something of a surprise in a disappointing European season for Bundesliga clubs. García, a well-travelled former Manchester City youngster, serves as his team’s metronome, completing 91.25% of his passes. He scored a spectacular group-stage goal against PSG, leaving their goalkeeper, Lucas Chevalier, flat-footed with the venom of his shot.Central midfielder: Dominik Szoboszlai (Liverpool)The postscript to Liverpool’s unhappy season was Arne Slot’s departure on Saturday, although few others escaped with credit. Szoboszlai was among the exceptions. There has been talk of the Hungarian ascending to club captaincy, and it makes sense considering that when Liverpool were good, he was usually at the centre of it. Often asked to play at full-back, his best football came as the marauding midfielder he was bought as. He rattled in five goals in 12 Champions League matches, and was star man when Liverpool smashed Galatasaray 4-0 at Anfield. His opening goal set the tone for a rare Liverpool high point.Left-wing is where many of the best players could be found in 2025-26, sometimes even within the same club, with Vinícius Júnior and Kylian Mbappé both wanting to play there for Real Madrid. Bodø/Glimt’s Hauge was one of the season’s stars. Newcastle’s Anthony Gordon won himself a move to Barcelona with 10 Champions League goals from that position. There can, though, be little doubt that Kvaratskhelia has been the best of them all. Though he was not at his best in the final, as he left the field exhausted and battered, there were still moments of class. Over the season, his bewildering mix of orthodox left-wing play and the explosive power he generates places “Kvaradonna” above the rest.Injuries and growing pains slowed the progress of football’s most exciting talent this season, but there have been enough shards of brilliance to make him an inevitable choice here. There are moments when he pulls off skills that would have been beyond Messi and Ronaldo at their peak. In a losing effort against Atlético in the quarter-final, Lamine Yamal was often incredible, with one spin beyond two defenders followed by a 50-yard diagonal to Marcus Rashford on the opposite flank a vignette of pure footballing genius. Pray for his good health at the World Cup.Mbappé outscored Kane’s total of 14 by a single goal this season, but the Englishman gets the nod here as he has shown another side of himself within Vincent Kompany’s exciting Bayern Munich. Kane has always been about more than merely plundering goals, and the creative edge he showed at Tottenham with Son Heung-min was replicated this season in his keen understanding with Bayern’s flying wingers, Michael Olise and Luis Díaz. Kane has been a worthy successor to Robert Lewandowski at Bayern, totalling 61 goals overall for his club this season.

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Re-enthroned Champions League-winning club should have always been this good but Qatar’s propaganda project is finally listening to an elite managerParis est mythique. There was nothing understated, no obvious shades of faux humilité about the headline in L’Équipe after Paris Saint-Germain had been re-enthroned as Champions League winners on Saturday night. Mythical. Storied. Ultimate. Yeah. But are they, though?In fairness it would be disappointingly un-Parisian not to consider your champion team the champions of all champions in the moment of victory. Give the people what they want. Play the hits. Nobody needs a polite Parisian waiter. Nobody wants to see an unstylish Parisian estate agent who has taken absolutely no care of his hair, or a Parisian bistro that doesn’t think it’s the VIP boarding lounge for the last arc leaving planet Earth. Hmm. Maybe there’s somewhere else more dismissive around the corner.In this case the Parisian exceptionalism is entirely justified. The PSG of Luis Enrique, Vitinha and Nasser al-Khelaifi has evolved into a sensationally good, beautifully watchable team. The way they beat Arsenal only adds to this. Mikel Arteta’s tactics worked in Budapest. PSG played below their level, and looked visibly drained at times from fiddling away around that solid red defensive structure.But they still found a way to guts it out, to win on the fine details. We got cork-popping football-of-the-gods in the 5-0 win over Inter in Munich last year. This was a different kind of champion quality.Plus, history tells us retaining the European Cup is very hard to do. Albeit, that degree of historic difficulty does rest on the assumption you’re simultaneously straining to win a domestic league, stretched on all fronts across eight gruelling months.Which is very obviously not the case here. Before we start doling out mythic status it is worth acknowledging the true nature of this feat. Essentially PSG have managed to win nine key games from February to May two years in a row, with a team, a schedule and an ever-giving ownership entirely geared to that spring mini-season.Another L’Équipe headline seemed to capture it better. “L’Europe a les champions qu’elle merite.” Now you’re talking. These are the champions European football deserves: beautiful, high‑craft, complex and also deceptive. This is elite performance for an overclass world, and a model that has successfully subverted the more established route to the very top.Ideally a European champion team, in the form first devised by L’Équipe itself 70 years ago, is supposed to express the strengths of its domestic league, to emerge from that crucible ready to show the rest of Europe why this system, right now, is the best.Instead the domestic league has been bypassed. The current PSG express nothing about Ligue 1 and everything about their own ambition and power. Nuno Mendes and Marquinhos have both played more minutes in the Champions League this season than in Ligue 1. Ousmane Dembélé started 11 of 34 Ligue 1 games and is basically a midweek player after Christmas, peaking for those dates. Does this really deserve a Ballon d’Or? How about half a Ballon d’Or?Here we have a football team recast as a luxury good, the kind of overclass product that can only be found behind the velvet rope in some elite private airport suite. Given the sole challenge here is to win the Champions League; given the will of the Qatari state, the clear and actionable plan, the domestic matches that are essentially tune‑ups, we should probably temper our feelings of awe when this does indeed happen.This is of course unfair on PSG. Most obviously it overlooks the achievements of Luis Enrique in creating PSG 2.0, a model of drive, focus and tactical coherence that bears no comparison to the celebrity machine that preceded it. PSG then: Neymar riding a snow leopard around his personal rooftop disco dressed in a solid gold bowler hat and chinchilla fur chaps. PSG now: Vitinha diligently revolving the ball, like a submarine captain down in the engine room twirling his pumps and sprockets, conductor of a team that loves to work as much as it loves the ball.The creative leader on Saturday night was Désiré Doué, whose super-skill is his ability to spin and stop with perfect balance, like a squirrel on a branch, and who embodies a new kind of elite footballer, the details-geek, the private chef devotee, a sleep student who takes timed naps to improve his energy levels. Which is definitely a step on from turning up to training three days into a week-long cheese and Red Bull bender.Luis Enrique has been empowered by the hierarchy and has entirely nailed the tactical architecture. This PSG play like a fusion of Pep-style possession ball and the direct attacking energy of peak Klopp Liverpool. The training methods have been innovative and data-heavy, with talk of an “immersive video simulator”, individual USB stick tactical notes, and training‑ground speakers pumping out stadium noise for Pavlovian visualisation vibes.It has been both surprising and also entirely unsurprising that this transformation has been effected so quickly. Who knew Qatar could make its propaganda project actually work by finally listening to a very good manager?The fact is PSG should always have been this good. There are no limits here. You don’t have to be a single-city petro-project glamour toy with an economically irrationally funding model to be successful. But it doesn’t hurt.There is in this context something telling that PSG are seen as European football’s good guys now, the purists, the keepers of the flame, not just good but good. Most neutrals seem to have supported them in Budapest, testament to a seductive, aesthetically pleasing style of play (based around an extreme wealth of talent). And also to the performative nature of sport, the way beauty disorientates the senses, the tendency to fawn over winners, as though this also confers some kind of character‑driven authority. Paradoxically so, given this remains a soft‑power project for a carbon dictatorship, driven by the same brutal process that built the Qatar World Cup. But hey. They do play some nice stuff.There is a further paradox here, because PSG also embody so many genuine sporting virtues. The average age of the starting XI this season is 24. Six academy players have made their professional debuts. PSG have five players in the France team. They’re also fantastically good at pumping out merch, at fluffing the “Rouge & bleu universe”, setting up hip little salons, pop‑ups and cultural events like the Ici c’est Paris la maison currently rolling out in LA and New York with its “immersive experiences combining sport, music, fashion, art and gastronomy”.The image-making, the energy of the cultural project is as breathtaking as the Parisian midfield. And in a way PSG do express Paris perfectly. The city is also a delightful illusion. Build the suburbs far out of sight on the edge of things. Preserve the perfect centre, the myth of existing only in beauty, art and culture, a place where residents get to act out the Parisian lifestyle, where every American tourist gets to pretend to be Hemingway.Here we have a model of beauty, a never-ending belle époque, with real-world grime and poverty just out of sight. And a place where PSG can also cosplay in victory, not just lovely, beautiful, free‑flowing but fundamentally pure. And yes, we’ll see you again in Madrid next year.

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Some struggle to love Mikel Arteta’s side but they went toe-to-toe with PSG in a gruelling, high-grade contestIt always seemed likely, somehow, that Arsenal’s season was going to come down to Gabriel Magalhães and a set piece. Just not, ideally, like this.After half an hour it was already the kind of day where it becomes impossible to remember a time when this game wasn’t happening, where the Puskas Arena is just the universe now, when there is just always this single humid moment, the same rolling bowl of noise, the red, white and blue shapes, the constantly shifting patterns.Even as the game edged into penalties at 1-1 close to 9pm the night still felt like a series of weirdly vivid moments. Here is David Raya being simultaneously triple-maintained by the Arsenal pit crew, pounded on both thighs, brain fed with data by a pair of crouching men, another flooding his mouth with fresh fluids.In the stands the same Arsenal fan had been leaping up all night, stringy arms beating the air, chain bouncing, king of the stairwell, a man completely lost in this time and this place. Down on the pitch Mikel Arteta had come to Budapest in his summer wardrobe, the light grey slacks jettisoned in favour of some very dark grey slacks and a silky polo shirt, poised on his chalk line like an unusually trim and energetic darts player.By now Arteta was into his sixth dance-battle rondo-huddle of the night, crouching and clenching and barking every word. He loves to talk about suffering. Across his three hours here Arsenal’s manager must have done 20,000 star jumps and 650 shuttle sprints, never letting his intensity drop. How will this man ever sleep again? They’re going to need some kind of elephant tranquilliser gun to put him down for the night.And so PSG have retained their title, completing the much-trumpeted two-peat. They are a hugely deserving champion team. All the more so at the end of a game that was made beautiful by Arsenal making sure anyone who wanted to win this thing had to be good enough to beat them, insisting that every trick and feint and moment of grace was gouged out of something hard and real.By the end this was a reminder too that some things are long, difficult and nuanced, that the world’s most popular form of entertainment is still like this at its best: a saga, grudging in its rewards, despite what you might hear about instant content, reel culture and the allegedly junk attention spans of young people.For Arsenal’s supporters there will be genuine pleasure in the performance of a young team with five English players in it; in Arteta successfully asserting his tactical plan at this rarefied level; and most specifically, perhaps, in the performance of Myles Lewis-Skelly, who was given the hardest job in football, taking on Vitinha in a Champions League final, and was sensationally good.The Puskas Arena is a huge grey metal bowl, steeply tiered on all sides, its white mesh tubing roof leaning in over the pitch. Budapest had been clammy all day, with a landlocked central European summer stillness in the air. The noise at kick-off captured the fan culture of these two clubs. The Paris sound is always dominated by the endlessly drumming ultras end, who basically just sing whatever is happening, a wall of people making noise near a football match; the Arsenal half of the stadium was less choreographed, more reactive, the familiarly English sense of a crowd having a conversation with itself.The Killers came out and did a really fast, sweaty medley of their songs and nobody really asked why and it was fine. And from the start there were some intriguing notes in the team Arteta picked.Right-back had to be Cristhian Mosquera, who is not a right-back, who seems too upright, too square, too long in the limbs to turn and twist like a right-back, and who was up against the frankly terrifying Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. But he played really well in his time on the pitch.Then there was Lewis-Skelly, who completed the most extraordinary bends-inducing redemption arc, from ghost player, filler in a vest, to facing off against the best midfield in Europe. He played 90 minutes and was fearlessly good in every one of them. Not on the bare numbers perhaps, but in his energy and covering and game intelligence, the ability to plug every gap and always offer an angle. There were some lovely moments. A surge through midfield in the first half, and a thigh-shredding charge back to dispossess Désiré Doué on 78 minutes. Lewis-Skelly and Declan Rice would have looked a very good option as England’s starting midfield pivot at the World Cup.Arsenal scored with the first proper piece of football in the game. It was made by a Leandro Trossard block-assist, the ball deflected into the path of Kai Havertz, suddenly all alone and spidering his way in on goal, and finishing brilliantly into the roof of the net. Matvey Safonov can often look like he’s just wandered into a pub in Maidstone and is trying to sell you a bag of kidneys. He had a good game here, although Arsenal will regret that he didn’t actually have to get a hand on any of their penalties in the shootout. He did though make the choice easy for Havertz, basically squatting down and saying, go on, put it up there.For the first quarter of the game Arsenal’s plan worked. They gave up the ball, but in the process de-fanged PSG. On his touchline Luis Enrique already looked like he’d just run a desert marathon in swimming trunks, eyes boggling, T-shirt darkened with sweat. Arsenal’s defensive interventions were superbly timed, always calm and high-craft. The best part of the Premier League is its utter focus, its extreme levels of intensity in every moment. And there was something fascinating in seeing PSG asked to rise to that level, after a season playing in a domestic league that has basically been turned into the County Championship. Doué and Kvaratskhelia will be fidgeting their way up the steps when they get home, waiting for William Saliba to jump out of the bushes, wondering if when they flick on the lights Lewis-Skelly is already going to be there occupying the chaise longue.On 61 minutes, Paris finally found their moment, Mosquera drawn into a foul in the box by Kvaratskhelia. Ousmane Dembélé rolled the kick into the corner. Arsenal might have folded. They didn’t. PSG also kept coming, finding their own more bloody-minded gear.And so we went to penalties. A word about Gabriel and the final miss. He was made to wait by the referee, who insisted on speaking to kicker and keeper. This really was a moment of random chance, the day suddenly veering into something else, losing its edge at the very last.Gabriel had played superbly well. His kick ballooned mockingly into the crowd. The fireworks erupted. Arsenal’s players didn’t crumple, but walked slowly around the pitch as it was invaded by scampering wonks, applauding the fans and drinking in a moment that they will be hungry to taste again.A season and a champion team that some have struggled to love, or at least to watch as a TV production, dished up a thrillingly intense, high-quality end note here. The game may be cruel, gruelling and hostage to details, but the lesson of Budapest was that it is undeniably still good.

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‘We will have to improve to try to get a different outcome’Manager unhappy Arsenal not given extra-time penaltyMikel Arteta spoke of his heartache after a skied penalty from Gabriel Magalhães in the shootout against Paris Saint-Germain ended Arsenal’s hopes of being crowned European champions for the first time, but emphasised the need to take that pain “and turn it into fuel”.Kai Havertz’s early strike and a defensive masterclass in the first half of the Champions League final that frustrated the holders had Arsenal supporters dreaming of a double after their first Premier League title for 22 years. But PSG hit back in the second half through Ousmane Dembélé from the spot before Arsenal thought they should have had a penalty of their own at the end of the first half of extra time.Arteta was booked for his protests after Noni Madueke tangled with Nuno Mendes. He then watched David Raya pull off a brilliant save from Mendes in the shootout after Eberechi Eze had put his spot-kick wide. It came down to Arsenal’s fifth penalty from Gabriel and the Brazilian was inconsolable after sending his effort over the bar.“Pain, that’s it,” said Arteta when asked to sum up his emotions. “When you are so close in the competition, and you are a few penalties away from winning the biggest club competition, that’s the way we should feel.”He added: “First of all you have to go through that pain, digest it, and turn it into fuel. To improve and to reach a different level, because it would demand a different level with the quality around Europe. I want to congratulate PSG because they are in my opinion the best team in the world.”Luis Enrique’s side have become only the ninth club in the competition’s history to retain their title and only the second in the Champions League era. But Arteta was disappointed that the German referee, Daniel Siebert, decided against awarding a penalty when Madueke went down in the area under pressure from Mendes.“I watched all the penalties in the competition in the last 72 hours, but that easily can be a penalty,” he said. “It is not what happened and that’s it. We will have to improve to try and get a different outcome. I will take a few days with my family and then we will start the process to review what we’ve done and decide to make some very important decisions if we want to reach another level.”Declan Rice admitted coming so close was a difficult pill to swallow but backed Arsenal to bounce back. “We will try to take some perspective from how far we have come as a group,” the England midfielder said. “Some of the best teams ever have lost on penalties in finals. It’s cruel, but that’s football. The manager has told us how much he loves us as a group. This is only the start for us.”Luis Enrique, who started with the same outfield players who defeated Inter 5-0 in last year’s final and has now won the Champions League three times, paid tribute to Arsenal’s defensive efforts.“Maybe today both teams deserved to win, but the way we played the whole season, I think we deserve it,” he said. “We are used to attacking [against a low block] but they are strong physically, they know how to defend and it was very tough. We’ll try to do it again next year. Why not?”

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Désiré Doué inspired PSG’s fightback to win in a shootout after being stunned by early goal from a classy Kai HavertzMatvey Safonov Appeared to forget that goalkeepers are allowed to use their hands for Havertz’s strike. Didn’t get near any penalties in shootout but didn’t need to. 6Achraf Hakimi Wasn’t 100% fit after coming back from a month out with a thigh injury and couldn’t have the same influence he usually does. 7Nuno Mendes Arsenal thought they should have had a penalty in extra time after an incident with Madueke. Weak penalty in shootout saved by Raya. 6Marquinhos The PSG captain could do nothing about the unfortunate deflection for opening goal. Probably didn’t expect to be substituted, however. 7Willian Pacho Came off second best for most of his ding-dong battle with Havertz but recovered to make some key blocks in extra time. 7Fabián Ruiz Should have been booked in first minute for throwing the ball away and lacked his usual composure in central midfield. 6Vitinha The heartbeat of PSG’s midfield was everywhere as usual. Should have done better with a great chance to win and wasn’t happy to be taken off in extra time. 8João Neves The Portugal midfielder was unsettled by physicality of his battle with Lewis-Skelly but didn’t give up and played a key role. 8Désiré Doué Seemed to get frustrated early on at being double marked by Hincapié and Trossard. Much improved after the break as PSG stepped things up. 9Ousmane Dembélé Last year’s Ballon d’Or winner flitted in and out of the game but helped to create the penalty and ruthlessly dispatched it into the bottom corner. 7Khvicha Kvaratskhelia Grew in influence after an uncharacteristically slow start. The Georgian’s jinking feet forced Mosquera to concede the penalty before later striking the woodwork. 8Substitutes: Bradley Barcola (for Kvaratskhelia, 84) Express pace almost resulted in two goals at end of normal time. 6; Gonçalo Ramos (for Dembélé, 90+6) Couldn’t get much change out of Saliba and Gabriel. 6; Warren Zaïre-Emery (for Ruiz, 95) Gave PSG extra legs in midfield. 6; Lucas Beraldo (for Vitinha, 105) Cool penalty in shootout. 7; Illia Zabarnyi (for Marquinhos, 105) N/ADavid Raya Largely a spectator for the first half. Could do nothing to stop Dembélé equalising from spot and came close to being Arsenal’s hero in the shootout. 7Cristhian Mosquera Preferred to Timber and kept Kvaratskhelia quiet in first half. But clumsily gave away penalty and was hooked after escaping a second booking. 6Gabriel Magalhães Two outstanding goal-saving tackles in the first half and set the tone for Arsenal throughout. But will always be remembered for the skied penalty in shootout. 7William Saliba So reliable defensively and a class act in possession. The France defender never looks ruffled, even when facing the best attack in world football. 8Piero Hincapié Got the better of his man Doué in their personal duel on several occasions and also provided the occasional attacking threat. 7Myles Lewis-Skelly More than justified his selection ahead of Zubimendi. A critical block to deflect Kvaratskhelia’s shot on to a post and never stopped running. 8Declan Rice Sacrificed his attacking instincts for the good of the team and made some key tackles. Almost punished by Barcola for losing the ball with last act of normal time. 7Martin Ødegaard The captain helped to frustrate PSG in the first half without offering much going forward. Still a surprise to see him substituted straight after the equaliser. 6Bukayo Saka Not his most effective performance in attack, even if it was clear that PSG were always wary of his threat and did his job in defensive rearguard. 7Kai Havertz Took his goal – the second he has scored in a Champions League final – beautifully and led the line impressively throughout. 8Leandro Trossard Didn’t know much about his assist for Havertz’s goal and showed some nice touches. Ran out of steam after the break. 6Substitutes: Jurriën Timber (for Mosquera, 66) Almost got on the end of one cross but had his hands full with Barcola. 6; Viktor Gyökeres (for Ødegaard, 66) Shot deflected wide in extra-time was only sight of goal apart from penalty in shootout. 6; Gabriel Martinelli (for Trossard, 83) Wasted great opportunity to set up Madueke with heavy pass. Excellent penalty. 7; Noni Madueke (for Saka, 83) Couldn’t believe he wasn’t awarded a penalty after burst into the area. 7; Eberechi Eze (for Havertz, 91) Little impact in extra-time and a nervous penalty. 5; Martín Zubimendi (for Lewis-Skelly, 91) A steadying influence when he came on for extra time. 6

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It was a showpiece that held the football world in its grip, the tension mounting exponentially, everything on the line. For Paris Saint-Germain, there was the opportunity to make it clear that this is a dynastic team; the rarity of retaining a Champions League title.For Arsenal, it was simple. Never mind the Invincibles. They stood to be immortal, a first triumph in this competition to follow their first Premier League triumph in 22 years; the thing that has changed everything about the mood around the club.It was a clash of styles, Arsenal defending with characteristic aggression after Kai Havertz had put them ahead in the early running. The striker had scored the winning goal in this game for Chelsea against Manchester City in 2021. Was he poised to be the hero again?PSG rallied, Ousmane Dembélé equalising from the penalty spot in the 65th minute and it was the prompt for the gloves to come off, both teams pushing, everybody aware that it would most likely come down to one moment. And, when the teams could not be separated after extra-time, it came in the penalty shootout.It was the longest of walks for Gabriel Magalhães, Arsenal’s defensive titan, to take the final kick of the regulation five rounds. His teammate, Eberechi Eze, on as a substitute, had missed the target in round two only for David Raya to square it back up by denying Nuno Mendes in round three.Gabriel had to score to keep Arsenal alive and he appeared to be delayed by the referee, Daniel Siebert. His heart hammered. So did that of everyone. And it was all too much. Gabriel went for power and the ball was still rising as it cleared the crossbar. The PSG fans behind the goal lit red flares in celebration. Arsenal were broken. Theirs had been a heroic effort. It was not enough.It was an occasion that hurtled towards its denouement, shaped by Havertz’s goal and what a finish it was from a player who knows a fair bit about delivering on this elevated stage. The angle looked too tight for him as he reached the left-hand side of the six-yard box after a run from halfway but it did not matter as he lashed his shot into the roof of the net.Why did Matvey Safonov have his arms low by his sides? Because the PSG goalkeeper did not expect the shot to go high. Havertz had initially reacted quicker than Willian Pacho to Leandro Trossard’s charging down of a Marquinhos clearance.Arteta had prioritised solidity with his selection. And why not? It had worked for him all season. He went for Martin Ødegaard over the X-factor of Eze; he was never going to play both in the middle of the pitch. He needed a more defensive player alongside Declan Rice and it was Myles Lewis-Skelly rather than Martín Zubimendi. Lewis-Skelly was excellent.Jurrien Timber was not fit enough to start at right-back so Arteta put his faith in Cristhian Mosquera. At left-back, he picked Piero Hincapiee over Riccardo Calafiori; the more secure option. Hincapie was also very good. It added up to four centre-halves across the defence. The battle lines appeared to have been drawn before kick-off.Arteta did not mind if PSG hogged the ball. Which they did. It was about whether his team could compress the spaces and keep them at arm’s length in the final third. Whether they could stand tall in the one v ones. Which frequently became two vones in Arsenal’s favour. Or even more than that. Arteta’s players worked tirelessly to cover for each other.The plan worked to perfection in the first half of normal time. PSG grew frustrated. They had a penalty shout for handball against Bukayo Saka on 17 minutes which the Arsenal winger got away after he miskicked an attempted clearance. But there was little else from PSG.Arsenal measured their progress in tackles. Mosquera won a big one against Khvicha Kvaratskhelia while Gabriel made a series of them. He was a one-man wrecking ball. Arsenal flickered on the transitions. After Lewis-Skelly surged upfield in the 26th minute, Saka crossed low to almost find Trossard, Safonov making a saving parry. When Ødegaard played in Havertz on 45 minutes, PSG needed a blocking challenge from Marquinhos.PSG told themselves to stay patient. The equaliser would come as long as they worked their patterns and rotations. Even if their opponents were all over them like an angry red rash. If only they could get in behind, which they struggled sorely to do.When they finally did so, they felt their hopes surge. Kvaratskhelia played the give-and-go with Dembélé and, at last, he was goal-side of Mosquera, whose challenge was clumsy. It was a clear penalty and perhaps a second yellow card for Mosquera, who had been booked for time-wasting on 47 minutes. He was spared the double punishment. Dembélé’s conversion was low into the corner.Arteta’s response was bold. Timber for Mosquera. And, more dramatically, Viktor Gyökeres for Ødegaard. Arsenal came out of their shells and there were moments when a better final ball might have led to real possibilities. Especially towards the end of regulation time when one substitute, Gabriel Martinelli, missed a pass for another one, Noni Madueke.PSG’s defending came to look a little last-ditch but they threatened at the other end. Before the end of normal time, Kvaratskhelia had stormed away and watched Lewis-Skelly deflect his shot against the outside of the near post while Vitinha whipped narrowly over when gloriously placed. Bradley Barcola, on for Kvaratskhelia, menaced with his jet-heeled pace on the counter.Arsenal continued to push in the first period of extra-time, with Eze on for Havertz. There was much to encourage their fans. Much for them to fret over, too. And rage against. When Madueke flicked on the afterburners in the 101st minute, he worked half a yard on the outside against Nuno Mendes. The pair grappled and they wrestled before Madueke went down and Mendes fell on top of him. No penalty, said Siebert, which was just about the right decision. Arteta was booked for his furious reaction. So was Rice.Luis Enrique made changes for the second additional period, taking off Marquinhos and Vitinha. His star count dwindled. Achraf Hakimi took over the captain’s armband. Désiré Doué took on greater responsibility. PSG got back on to the front foot, although Gyokeres almost stole it at the very end with a shot that deflected wide. The emotion was extraordinary. And then came the penalties.