Paris Saint-Germain, Champions League winner.
At long last the club that was transformed by Qatari billions and bought and sold a succession of the world’s greatest players in an extravagant bid to get to the top has its hands on the big one.
European club soccer’s grandest prize has a new home after PSG thrashed Inter Milan 5-0 in Saturday’s final in Munich.
The trophy that not even Lionel Messi, Neymar or Kylian Mbappe could deliver to the French club was finally claimed by Luis Enrique, the Spanish coach who has overseen PSG’s shift from the era of galactico signings to one of genuine team-building.
Fitting then that Désiré Doué, the 19-year-old French forward emblematic of the club’s new generation, was the chief inspiration on a balmy night. He became the third teenager to score in a Champions League final, following Patrick Kluivert and Carlos Alberto.
Doue scored twice and set up another goal in little over an hour on the field before being substituted in the second half.
Achraf Hakimi, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and substitute Senny Mayulu, the fourth teenager to ever score in a final added to Doue’s double as PSG recorded the biggest win in a final in the Champions League’s 69-year history.
Now PSG can truly sit alongside the royalty of European soccer. Not by virtue of turnover or merchandizing, but on the merits of its achievements on the field.
The Champions League is the ultimate barometer of the continent’s elite clubs and up until now PSG has been a flashy contender that always came up short.
That all changed at Allianz Arena, the home of Bayern Munich, one of the titans of Europe, and a fitting stage for PSG’s crowning moment. Not least because it was against Bayern that it lost its only other Champions League final in 2020, leaving Neymar in tears in an empty stadium in Lisbon where fans were locked out because of the pandemic.
On this occasion, thousands of PSG supporters were there to revel in the moment, waving flags, lighting flares and drowning out their rivals from Inter, many of whose supporters left the stadium long before the final whistle.