The choice of superlatives will be inevitable when one decides to talk about PSG’s 5-0 win over a hapless Inter Milan in the UEFA Champions League final at the Allianz Arena on Saturday, May 31.
No team has won with such a big margin in a European final, no team has scored so many goals either since Alfredo Di Stefano’s outstanding Real Madrid beat Eintracht Frankfurt 7-3 at Hampden Park many years ago.
By reigning supreme in the UCL final, Luis Enrique’s men also secured their first-ever treble.
One can also relate to the Champions League final in 1994 when AC Milan trounced Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona Dream Team 4-0.
Only this time around, the favour was returned to another Italian team.
Paris Saint-Germain Sliced Open Inter Milan’s Defence Repeatedly
It was known even before the game that Inter would play defensive football to try to stop PSG’s marauding attackers.
Inter started with a 3-5-2, which often effectively became 5-3-2, with both wing-backs staying back. Denzel Dumfries ventured forward at times, which gave PSG some space through the left.
The PSG midfielders’ superior ability to play short passes to their wingers and centre-forward to set them free in the final third was going to be crucial and it turned out to be the case.
One such short, incisive pass through the lines found Desire Doue inside the Inter box, who then played it sideways to Achraf Hakimi for the latter to score.
Even before scoring the opening goal, PSG were easily the more dominant team, pressing high intensely and playing passes at will inside the opposition half to push the Inter defensive line back.
Vitinha kept moving forward at will with the ball on his feet, Nuno Mendes kept whipping diagonal balls across and Ousmane Dembele and Kvicha Kvaratskhelia kept swapping positions.
Inter’s half was flooded with passes – forward, lateral and diagonal – as the Italians witnessed a football symphony from the French side, much to their dismay.
The battle between two three-man midfields was going to be decisive and PSG’s won it hands down.
Counter-Attack Masterclass and a Night To Remember
However, as Inter tried to come out of their shell, PSG responded with some counter-attacking masterclass.
They decimated Inter with speedy forays with Doue and Kvaratskhelia being lethal in particular.
Fabian Ruiz, the central midfielder with a great range of passing, kept playing as a de-facto third centre-back to give Mendes some cover in stopping Inter’s attacks through the right primarily courtesy of Dumfries and Calhonaglou.
In the end, as the Parisians secured their first-ever Champions League triumph, not all the Italians present at the beautiful stadium were crestfallen.
Gianluigi Donnarumma, the former AC Milan goalkeeper, who left the club in a somewhat acrimonious fashion a few years back, had a big smile on his face.
The Italian custodian is a frontrunner to become the first goalkeeper to win the Ballon d’Or, having secured the French Ligue 1 and French Cup titles already.
However, in the end, if the night belonged to any man in particular, it was the 55-year-old Luis Enrique, who joined an elite club of managers to win two Champions League titles.
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