As the hundreds of VIP guests at Uefa’s official Champions League final dinner listened attentively, Aleksander Ceferin addressed his audience. It was the night beforeParis Saint-Germaineviscerated Inter and, taking the floor before the starters were served at Munich’s Paulaner am Nockherberg brewery, he elected to keep his predictions general. “Tomorrow we play the best game a club could ever play,” he enthused. “The one who wins tomorrow will be the best club in the world.”
Ceferin’s wording was no accident. The final took place against the context ofUefa’s continuing tensions with Fifaand, most pertinent, the imminent rebirth of the Club World Cup. Whether PSG are the planet’s most becoming football institution may depend on where your moral compass points but, about 26 hours after the Uefa president’s speech, they proved beyond any doubt that their team sit above everyone.
Will this title, which has come well behind the schedule laid out by their Qatari ownership when they took over in 2011, prove a mere ripple in history or could it spark an era of dominance? Has Luis Enrique’s enthralling young side simply happened upon a fleeting confluence of time and place, or will they now bed in for the long haul? Those questions hung in the air as Parisian heads cleared the next morning, although realistically nobody should expect their demolition job at the Allianz Arena to be a one-off.
Within hours of the full-time whistle, figures close to PSG were pointing out this has been only year one of their well-documented spring clean. They sought to draw a line under the decadence that had coloured much of the club’s modern era, even if their investment in humbler individuals and future-proofed talents has hardly come cheap. This trophy crowns a project and signals the start of one. The new direction has been born out already and there is no intention of changing course, or speed, now.
There are clear notes of caution. One is that PSG’sChampions Leaguecampaign was saved by the playoff safety net that gives faltering big guns a second shot in the new format. Even allowing for the fact direct comparisons are wobbly given the previous home-and-away structure no longer holds, it is worth pointing out the seven points they had amassed after six games of the league phase would have brought their elimination in previous years.
Their chair, Nasser al-Khelaifi, nominally wearing his European Club Association hat, made precisely this point in his own speech at Paulaner am Nockherberg. His sentiment was that it had been far from an easy ride. Even though they were dominant in the knockout phase, helped significantly by spending £60m on Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s ability to add thrilling new depth to their attack in January, there had beenmarginal momentsagainst Liverpool, Aston Villa and Arsenal. Not even a cup competition set up to smooth the favourites’ paths can offer any guarantees of sustained supremacy.
Another caveat arrived, perversely, in the form of a well-wisher. “The big day has finally arrived,” wrote Kylian Mbappé on Instagram after taking in his former employers’ win. “Victory and in the style of an entire club. Congratulations, PSG.” It was magnanimous indeed from a player who is embroiled in a legal battle with PSG over what he claims is almost £50m in unpaid wages. But the fact Mbappé was offering such wholesome sentiments as a Real Madrid player still presents a red flag. While his departure was seen internally as the final big heave towards breaking with past habits, the fact remains he was a star who decided there was one more rung to climb.
Will Désiré Doué, Bradley Barcola, Vitinha or Willian Pacho feel that way one day? PSG remain tied to perceptions that their domestic league offers an insufficient workout; there is also the point that one trophy cannot pull their history and gravitas alongside those of Real Madrid or, should they knock themselves into shape, Bayern Munich and some of the leading English clubs.
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The counterpoint is that the mind-boggling depth of their resources, summed up by the fact their wage bill is thought to be around double that of Inter, allows them to accelerate far beyond traditional grandees as an attractive prospect. PSG were simply too richly funded, well coached and tactically liberated for their opponents to cope with. Perhaps, in an era where appearances matter more than ever and swathes of elite football have become micromanaged to the point of tedium, it is a marriage that makes them the biggest show in town.
Ceferin had hedged his bets regarding Saturday’s outcome but maybe it pays to be bold in making guesses after all. A few hours before the final, another leading European football executive sat on a rooftop terrace in Munich and assessed the night’s prospects. PSG would win 6-1, he said, to mirth around the table but keeping an entirely straight face. The spirit of that forecast was to be proved accurate. It may be harder to claim that PSG 2.0 are destined to ride off into the sunset, but Ceferin’s carefully chosen words contained a truth that holds for now.