PSG 5—0 Inter Milan

Football is a simple game. If you have the best players, you win. Would Neymar, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe get into the PSG team that won their first European Cup at a canter?  

But football is also a team game. Any and all of the above are no loss. This is a young Luis Enrique team that plays beautiful football. Each player works hard to close down their opponents so they don’t have time on the ball. None of the recognised stars of yesteryear worked hard enough to be included in Luis Enrique’s grand plan.

The five second rule (supposedly) introduced by Pep Guardiola applies here.

The European Cup was gone from Inter Milan in the first twenty minutes. Teenagers run their heart out in the way that established veterans do not. Nineteen-year-old Desire Doue created the first and scored the second. He pivoted and turned and played the ball to the edge of the six-yard box for Achraf Hakim for a simple finish. Hakim is nominally a full back. That tells you all you need to know about PSG’s press.

Inter defender Federico Dimarco who had played them onside for the first goal, was the fall guy again eight minutes later. Doue’s shot coming off his shoulder before ending up in the net.

PSG’s fifth goal was also scored by a nineteen-year-old substitute, Mayulu, whipping one off the post and he was running, running, running as the party had already started. And it had.

Ousmane Dembele’s flicked pass released Vitinha. He played in Doue who was never going to miss and he had his second and the game was over in the 63^rd minute, officially or not. The referee did Inter a favour and added no added time to the 90 minutes.

Here we see multiculturalism in play. My team Cetlic won their only European trophy in 1967, coming from behind to beat Inter. That team was made up of players living in a twelve-mile radius from Glasgow (Bobby Lennox being the furthest away in Rothsay).

Living the dream as the Georgian, Kvaratskhelia, got the fourth on the 73^rd minute, equalling the highest Champions-League-final win. A record PSG smashed. The former Napoli star (his former team won the Italian league, taking it from Inter in the final few games) Kvaratskhelia is strong and quick, almost impossible to knock off the ball. He doesn’t drift back. He sprints back and often he can be found defending deeper than the full back, Nuno Mendes. He’s also great in the air. He’d missed a header from a PSG corner which went over the bar.

Earlier in the first half, he was marking Thuram for an Inter corner. Thuram should have scored as he got a head to it. But PSG weren’t Barcelona. This wasn’t like a basketball game with one side scoring and the other—not—defending. The match was only ever going one way. PSG’s second goal, for example, was due to Pacho’s perseverance. Thuram was trying to let the ball go out for an Inter corner (their strength) but the PSG defender got in behind and hooked the ball to the edge of the eighteen-yard box. Kvaratskhelia carried it forward. Dembele peeled off. He set up Doue with a crossfield pass. Game over.

Ironically, Barcelona playing PSG, with their world-class teenage wingers might not have been such a mismatch.

I’d seen enough of PSG in earlier rounds to believe they would win it. English clubs cleaned up on all the other European trophies. Liverpool beat PSG in Paris and Villa beat them in the Midlands. PSG are not unbeatable but they were unstoppable in Munich. It was a win for the free-flowing football that I love. Luis Enrique and his squad deserved it and there was a nice touch with the PSG fans unveiling a tifo showing their manager planting a Barcelona flag after their 2015 cup win and his nine-year-old daughter, Xana, looking on (RIP). Some things are bigger that football. But this victory looks long-lived.    

Unleash the Beastie! https://bit.ly/bannkie