The suffering only makes it sweeter and how Paris Saint-Germain had suffered in the Champions League after the Qatar Sports Investments takeover of 2011. Before this season, it had been 12 consecutive qualifications for the knockout rounds and 12 assorted sets of heartbreak, some scarcely believable. A first success in the competition consistently eluded them.
This was the night when the French champions broke through, when they delivered on the obsession of their owners, of everybody connected to the club; 13th time lucky. All of the emotion came pouring out as Luis Enrique’s swashbuckling team tore into Inter, the result not in doubt from the moment that Désiré Doué made it 2-0 before the midway point of the first half. The 19-year-old was nervelessly brilliant.
It had been possible, in fact, to fear for Inter from the first whistle. PSG were in that kind of mood. They have been the dominant team in Europe since the turn of the year, sweeping all before them, and they were determined to drive it home. It would become impossibly grisly for Inter, Simone Inzaghi’s team powerless to resist the PSG waves, slumping to the widest margin of defeat that this competition has known in a final.
After Doué had scored his second for 3-0, teed up by the irrepressible Vitinha, and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia made it four with another one-on-one breakaway, there was a moment when the substitute Bradley Barcola tied the veteran Inter defender Francesco Acerbi in such a knot before surging past him that it felt cruel. Barcola would blow the chance.
PSG toyed with Inter. When a fan of the Serie A club was pictured on the big screen in floods of tears, it was the defining image from their point of view. It was not so long ago Inter were on for a treble. Top of their domestic league, they were into the Coppa Italia semi-finals against Milan. More broadly, they had designs on avenging their loss to Manchester City in the 2023 Champions League final, on winning Europe’s biggest tournament for the first time in 15 years. They have finished empty-handed; utterly broken.
PSG were not finished at 4-0. Doué had made way and it was another 19-year-old, Senny Mayulu, on as a substitute, who made the final incision, shooting home from a Barcola pass. For PSG, it added up to a treble; at long last, they have their grail. And there were few dry eyes when their fans unfurled a tifo shortly after the trophy lift. It was to honour the memory of Luis Enrique’s daughter Xana, who died of cancer in 2019 at the age of nine.
The PSG fans spilled on to the pitch in their thousands after that but the thick police line held, although the situation felt good-natured, unlikely to spiral out of control. Those supporters simply pinched themselves because their team had been so good from the first whistle – the positional interchanges, the unusual overloads, the fizz of the passing. PSG brought a fierce press, too, and Inter struggled to get out. The goalkeeper, Yann Sommer, was repeatedly pressured when he had the ball at his feet.
Vitinha was the architect of so much, including Achraf Hakimi’s breakthrough goal. Vitinha watched Kvaratskhelia and Fabián Ruiz make moves off the left, pulling at the seams of the Inter defence, and when he got the ball back, he fizzed it up to Doué on the left of the area. Hakimi was on the move from right-back, attacking the six-yard box. Doué took a touch as he spun and found him. It was all ping-perfect.
PSG tightened their grip in the 20th minute and, at that point, Inter were gasping. Nicolò Barella thought he had won a corner but that was before Willian Pacho jumped into a challenge on him, hooking the ball away, and the end-to-end PSG counter was devastating. Kvaratskhelia and Ousmane Dembélé were prominent, the latter going right to Doué, whose shot deflected off Federico Dimarco to beat Sommer.
Inter fought to clear their heads. Maybe a set piece could offer them a lifeline? Acerbi went close from one, Marcus Thuram thumped a header from another just wide having got above Kvaratskhelia. Barella also took a heavy touch in open play when well placed.
But by then, it was clear what we were watching – a celebration of PSG’s well-grooved patterns, their fearlessness, their ability to create spaces. Dembélé dropped deep from his central attacking role. He went right. He went pretty much wherever. Doué’s licence to roam off the right was pronounced. Then again, it does help when you have Hakimi thundering beyond you.
The contrasts were everywhere. It was PSG’s youthful swagger v Inter’s experience. It was 4-3-3 without a pure centre-forward v 3-5-2 with twin No 9s. It was attack v defence. And it was big budgets v tight economics, cuteness in the market. In Simone Inzaghi’s four years at Inter, his most expensive signings have been Benjamin Pavard and Davide Frattesi, each for a little more than €30m. Only two of the PSG starting XI cost less than that.
Inzaghi needed a punch to land after the restart but Inter laboured to get into the positions. Their only clear chance of the second half came for Thuram on 75 minutes, which Donnarumma saved and, by then, PSG had four.
The alarm bells sounded for the third when Vitinha got on the ball and started to scuttle and probe, the ball under his spell, his markers close and yet far away. The give-and-go with Dembélé was lovely, his teammate finessing it with a back-heel and Vitinha was in business. The pass to Doué was measured to perfection. Game over, even if there was still time for Kvaratskhelia and Mayulu to salt Inter’s wounds.
