Has there ever been a game of football quite like this? On a luminous, thrilling, slightly crazed night at the Parc des Princes, Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich produced something that felt like a different category of human activity altogether.
There were nine goals in Paris, the most ever in a Champions League semi-final first leg. The end result was a largely arbitrary 5-4 lead for PSG going into next week’s return. Most remarkable was the nature of the spectacle itself, which felt like football of the demigods, a startling combination of unceasing fine point craft, and constant attacking thrust.
We came expecting another densely packed semi-final in the most pressurised club football competition ever devised: fine margins in between the crush and press. What we got was something closer to a piece of art, 90 minutes of high end, full-contact collective improvisation.
By rights a 5-4 should be a little messy and bloody. This was crisp, clean and almost orderly in its to-and-fro, crammed with constantly evolving cameos; from the feather-light brilliance of Michael Olise, the most dramatically improved player in Europe, a man on a rocket-thrust to the outer atmosphere, to the deep-jazz improvisations of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.
Paris had been a lovely, crisp, sunlit place before kick-off, the wide, empty streets around the Parc des Princes humming with a slightly triumphalist energy. PSG have enjoyed being favourites in this competition. The lessons of Bayern’s victory against PSG earlier in the season – so, so many matches ago – had been clear enough. Sit on Vitinha, which is easier said than done, given he’s basically human WD40, able to slip and slide in the tiniest of spaces. And press high, be bold and feed your own attack.
And from the start both teams just tore into this game, taking huge hungry bites out of the spaces in front of them. Five goals in the opening 45 minutes followed. Breathless, bold, fiercely committed attacking football in a game of the highest stakes. Who knew this was allowed?
Bayern started well. Olise drifted past Nuno Mendes at the first opportunity, a wide player who doesn’t so much beat you as politely crop you out of the picture. And even in those opening exchanges this was already a beautiful game of football, high quality, but also vertical, hungry, attack-facing.
Bayern’s opening goal came on 17 minutes. The straight-line running of Luis Díaz made it, exchanging passes with Olise, before being tripped by an over-stretching Willian Pacho. Harry Kane absorbed the vast rolling boos around the Parc, paused, paused again, and rolled the ball into the corner as Matvey Safonov dived the other way. It was Kane’s 13th Champions League goal this season, nudging him up on the shoulder of Kylian Mbappé as top scorer.
It should have been 2-0 moments later as Kane played a lovely soft pass that put Olise in on goal, only to see his shot well saved. And with 24 minutes gone it was 1-1. This was a moment to enter the Kvaratskhelia zone. Taking the ball in an inside-left channel, the world’s most misleadingly bedraggled elite attacker cranked the throttle, charged in that barbarian-at-the-gates style at the retreating Bayern defence, zigzagged inside and curled a low shot into the far corner.
Both teams just kept on running. On the half-hour mark Olise breezed past Mendes again and crossed from the goalline, the ball deflected on to the near post. And moments later PSG took the lead from a corner, João Neves wrenching his neck and producing a sensational header into the far corner.
It was giddy, breathless, adrenal stuff. And with 41 minutes gone it was 2-2. This time it was Olise’s turn to do something outlandish, albeit in his own balletically graceful way. He took the ball in a central position, four PSG defenders ahead of him, and just drifted into the space that was suddenly there, glaringly obvious now he mentions it. From there Olise produced a no-backlift spank past Safonov, two seconds of fairy-dust attacking craft in the middle of all that heat and noise.
Somehow the first half still was not finished. In injury time PSG had a penalty, awarded after a VAR check on an Alphonso Davies handball. Ousmane Dembélé buried the kick. The score was 3-2 as the teams walked off, although frankly it could have been anything at all at that point.
The second half began at a more measured pace, which is to say, still insanely breakneck. On 56 minutes it was 4-2 to PSG, as, for the first time, the game fell apart a little. Achraf Hakimi found a corridor of space down the right. His cross evaded the Raft of the Medusa style grapple in the middle, Dembélé dummying over the ball, for Kvaratskhelia, massively unmarked, to spank in his second. On 58 minutes Dembélé made it 5-2, jinking inside and hitting an instant shot in off the post.
Bayern seemed to have evaporated at that point, to be dying in the heat of PSG’s sustained attacking drive. All over then. Or apparently not. Within 10 minutes the score had gone from 5-2 back to 5-4.
First Dayot Upamecano headed in a floated free-kick. Then Díaz scored from a lovely floated Kane pass, jinking inside then out and smashing the ball into the corner.
It might have ended 5-5 as Bayern pressed late on. Instead there was applause for both teams at the final whistle, ahead of a second leg next week that looks both perfectly poised and already much too far away. Can we not just do this all again tomorrow?
