Paris Saint-Germain are the champions of Europe after beating Inter Milan by a record 5-0 score line in the Champions League final.
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.
It was not only PSG’s first triumph in the final of European club football’s grandest prize, but the winning margin in the match in Munich is also a record for the competition’s final.
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 Desire Doue, 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 more than an hour on the field, before being substituted in the second half.
Achraf Hakimi, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and substitute Senny Mayulu, the fourth teenager to 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 football. Not by virtue of turnover or merchandising, 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.
They’d been partying in the streets of Munich throughout the day, but that was nothing compared to the scenes of joy when Marquinhos held the trophy aloft in front of teammates, with fireworks and golden confetti exploding behind them.
PSG truly delivered when it mattered after so many setbacks in this competition. If there were any nerves from Luis Enrique’s players, it did not show as they dominated Inter from the start.
When Vitinha’s threaded pass into the box found Doue’s feet, the French champions advanced with a move of speed and precision in just 12 minutes. Instead of shooting, the forward slid in Hakimi into an open net.
Hakimi’s celebrations were subdued, but PSG’s fans erupted.
Eight minutes later, Doue’s shot from the right of the box deflected off Federico Dimarco and past Inter goalkeeper Yann Sommer, who had the advantage of more luck than precision.
When he broke the 63rd, he slammed the ball into the bottom corner of the goal.
In the 86th, just two minutes after starting, Mayulu added his name to the list of teenage scorers in a final and added a fourth to Kvaratskhelia’s list of 10 minutes later.
Source: Aljazeera
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