Champions League: It’s bridesmaids vs billionaires

If you’d spoken to a member of the football intelligentsia about Paris St-Germain (PSG) three years ago, they would have rolled their eyes. Here was a prime example, they might have said, of ambition outstripping delivery. They would have been right.

PSG wanted desperately to sup at European football’s high table, breaking bread with the Real Madrids and Bayern Munichs of this world. Instead, they were like diners trapped in the restaurant’s waiting area, trying not to look conspicuous while others were shown to their reserved tables.

It was only 10 years ago that Zlatan Ibrahimovic made a big fuss about moving from Juventus to PSG, who are owned by the Qatari government. The move, he said with his usual bombast, was far beneath him.

And it was only five or so years ago that PSG’s owners went on a cash-mad buying spree that had very similar players like Neymar, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé on the same roster. Misdirected buying if you have money is always an option. It’s an option PSG always seemed to take.

If one counts current coach Luis Enrique, a former Spain manager, they’ve also flashed the chequebook at gaffers. They’ve had four coaches in 5½ years, including Mauricio Pochettino, the former Spurs boss, who lasted all of six months.

Here was a club who, unlike the Sex Pistols, who knew what they wanted and how to get it, had no idea in the world how to get what they wanted. PSG were world football’s mild embarrassment, a sure way of bringing supporters of rival clubs temporarily together in shared mirth.

And eye rolling.

It might be slightly trite to say this, but Enrique’s arrival at PSG in July 2023 changed that after Thomas Tuchel had started the turnaround. Tuchel had the misfortune of losing the 2020 Champions League final to Bayern and was — such is life — mercilessly shown the door.

But Tuchel began something. PSG were no longer flashy Parisian cowboys with more money than sense. To borrow a metaphor from another sport, Enrique ran with Tuchel’s ball.

He added rigour, best practice and hardness to the club, often bringing in Portuguese and Spanish players allied to the more eye-catching talents of Frenchman Ousmane Dembélé and the Georgian left-winger signed from Napoli, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.

As their draw against Bayern in the second leg of their semifinal in Munich demonstrated, they are a side who can squeeze out a pragmatic result when they aren’t flaying an opposition with attacking ambition. It’s a water-cooler cliché, but PSG look close to the complete package.

When Arsenal play them in the Champions League final at the Puskás Aréna in Budapest on Saturday night, they’ll bring a baggage-filled backstory of their own. Arsenal, if we’re being slightly reductive, are European football’s bridesmaids (or so goes the theory). They’re attractive to watch but fade when it counts. Style but no steel.

This narrative held until last week, when Bournemouth opened the scoring against Arsenal’s closest rivals, Manchester City, who equalised through Erling Haaland in the 94^th minute. The one-all draw meant City dropped points, which meant that Arsenal, above them at the end of the Bournemouth game by four points, won the 2025/2026 English Premier League (EPL) title with a game to play.

Winning their first EPL title in 22 years will have buoyed Arsenal no end. It will also have allowed them time to rest their key players (midfielder Martin Ødegaard and keeper David Raya, who Arsenal legend Patrick Vieira said recently on Sky Sports had been “outstanding all season”) for longer ahead of the final.

Enter the suave Frenchman Arsène Wenger, who brought the continent to north London

Arsenal’s contemporary story — in this post-Brexit age — is really all about Europeanisation. There was a time when they were steadfastly English. David Rocastle, Paul Merson and Tony Adams, the most English Englishman imaginable, were Gunners down to the cannon on their jerseys. All their players were north Londoners drawn from close to Highbury, where they once played.

In 1996, however, after a frankly hopeless period, someone had the bright idea to appoint a European manager. Enter the suave Frenchman Arsène Wenger, who brought the continent to north London in the form of Robert Pirès, Vieira, Thierry Henry and others.

During his 22 years in charge, Wenger also brought a stats-driven approach to management and an emphasis on diet. He encouraged the use of supplements like creatine. He irritated the players no end by insisting on away games that their hotel minibars be locked.

For those inclined to look to history for meaning, he will be there again on Saturday night, ineffable but present, with his former player Mikel Arteta (Arteta was signed by Wenger from Everton) now coaching the team.

Pirès and Henry were both in the side when Arsenal last reached a Champions League final in 2005/2006, losing 2-1 to Barcelona in Paris, but so, too, were European players we might have forgotten. Anyone remember Alexander Hleb, the Belorussian? Jens Lehmann, the German? Or even Freddie Ljungberg, the bustling Swede? Under Wenger, Arsenal became cosmopolitan.

Wenger’s urbane transformation of a good but essentially parochial Arsenal was extended by post-Wenger coaches Unai Emery and, briefly in a caretaker capacity, Ljungberg before Arteta took over the reins in 2019. Arsenal are now where they want to be: on the cusp of an inconceivable double. Not bad for a team of slick but serial underachievers.

So how will the final shape up? For all of PSG’s attacking threat (remember their sublime five in the first leg of the semifinal against Bayern?), Arsenal stubbornly refuse to concede goals. For the statisticians among us, they let in a mere 27 of them all season in the EPL. That’s — get this — 23 fewer than third-placed Manchester United. Remarkable.

It took until Matchday 5 in the Champions League qualifying round for them to concede a goal in Europe, when they let in one in their 3-1 victory over Bayern. In eight preliminary round fixtures they kept five clean sheets (against Athletic Bilbao, Olympiakos, Club Brugge, Atletico Madrid and Slavia Prague). They’re harder to break down than the reinforced door to the South African Mint.

In last season’s Champions League final, PSG slapped Italy’s Inter around to the tune of 5-0. With Arsenal’s penchant for shutting the defensive door, a repeat of the 2025 final in Budapest seems unlikely. Maybe we should just dispense with 90 minutes of foreplay followed by additional time. Penalties, anyone?

With Arsenal’s very un-Arsenal-like defensive record pitted against PSG’s “we-can-score-from-anywhere” brio, a draw looks like a very likely result. To this we should add the fact that finals tend to generate their own logic. This logic isn’t to be found in what’s gone on before, or what seasonal form says, or even what the TV soothsayers and suburban pundits say.

The logic of the final will be generated by the final itself.

An early Arsenal goal, say, could blow the final wide open, forcing PSG to attack the game, leaving them vulnerable to the counter. One from PSG early might tease Arsenal forward, and PSG could score two.

A crabbier affair, with lots of mutual watchfulness and much square passing, seems like the more likely outcome. The most adventurous football of the competition was very likely played in PSG’s first-leg 5-4 semifinal victory over Bayern. It was beautiful football that was thrilling to watch. In contrast, it seems it’s going to be a night for the purists on Saturday.

In all of this speculation, spare a thought for two players who probably won’t get the plaudits they deserve post-Budapest, both of them defenders: Gabriel Malgahães (Arsenal) and Willian Pacho (PSG). Better known as Gabriel, the Brazilian defender is one of the reasons Arsenal have been so miserly this season. He’s started in 11 of their Champions League games.

Pacho, an Ecuadorean, arrived at PSG in the summer of 2024. He was everywhere in PSG’s second-leg semifinal against Bayern two weeks ago. He blocked, he tackled, he defended with his arms behind his back. Pacho was colossal in Munich. And he’s likely to be just as colossal in Budapest.

True, it’s slightly counterintuitive to praise PSG’s defending, but there you go. Dembélé and Kvaratskhelia might have scored two goals apiece against Bayern in the first leg, but every attack rests on solid foundations. Pacho and his fellow PSG defenders provide just that.