Bayern Munich 2 PSG 0 (Bayern win 3-0 on aggregate)
They will, of course, keep trying. Another few signings in the summer, perhaps a new coach, a few tweaks to the project. Certainly Ligue 1 defences can expect a whole new world of punishment next season.
And in a sense, this is simply the mantra of the modern Paris Saint-Germain. Ever bought? Ever failed? No matter. Buy again. Fail again. Fail better. Fail with the two greatest forwards in the world at your disposal. Fail on the counter-attack. Fail by giving it away in your own penalty area and letting Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting tap the ball into an empty net.
Meanwhile, this was one more chance gone for Lionel Messi, for Kylian Mbappé, for Neymar, injured here and perhaps watching on television. It will be of little solace to them, or indeed the club’s Qatari backers, that they competed pretty well for the last half-hour in Paris and the first hour here.
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For all the leaders and organisers in this team, it remains a source of bafflement that a team with every resource at its disposal remains so lacking in basic maturity, that a club with 29 trophies in the last decade still looks so ill-equipped to win. Bayern Munich were barely better than competent here. They do not yet look like potential winners of this trophy. And yet over 180 minutes, they knew when to turn up the heat.
Initially at least, this was not so much the fluent, imperial Bayern that had recorded seven wins out of seven in the Champions League but the more hesitant, flabby Bayern that have won four out of eight in the Bundesliga since Christmas and carelessly allowed an actual title race to gestate.
Manuel Neuer has been a big loss, of course, but this alone does not quite explain the tentativeness at the back, the stilted build-up, the occasional spasm of whiteout panic to which they seem increasingly susceptible.
Never was this more apparent than the moment of high farce eight minutes from half-time, when an under-pressure Yann Sommer tried to dribble his way out of trouble. After riding the first couple of challenges, Sommer found himself trapped in a hall of mirrors: limbs splaying, gait uncertain, the ball seemingly everywhere at once. To his horror, Vitinha won the ball on the 18-yard line and poked a shot at goal that was saved only by a desperate sliding challenge from Matthijs de Ligt.
This was perhaps the defining motif of the opening part of the game: Bayern seemingly in control without ever really being in control at all. Paris looked secure at the back and enjoyed several promising half-openings on the counter.
Jamal Musiala twisted and turned but struggled to get into the game. Messi ruminated menacingly when he wasn’t getting the bejesus kicked out of him. With the ravenous Vitinha and the nerveless Marco Verratti in midfield, Paris were even holding their own in the centre, which is where Bayern normally eat you for breakfast.
If nothing else, the stakes of the game demanded an injection of intensity in the second half. It came from Musiala, swerving past Achraf Hakimi by the left touchline and creating an opening for Choupo-Moting, who got the ball stuck under his feet.
Seconds later Choupo-Moting had the ball in the net only for the goal to be ruled out for offside against Thomas Müller. But this little bright spell at the start of the second half seemed to awaken something in the home side.
At which point it was pretty clear that one of two things was going to happen: Paris were going to dip into their famous reserves of resolve, resilience and togetherness, or they were going to subside like a week-old macaroon.
Even so, there was something faintly breathtaking at the on-brand predictability with which Paris crumbled, losing the ball in their own penalty area after a lukewarm pass by the teenage defender El Chadaille Bitshiabu. Verratti was robbed by Müller, Leon Goretzka squared for Choupo-Moting, and an hour into the game the familiar order of things had somehow asserted itself.
Sensing their entire season tapering to a point, Paris briefly rallied. Sommer atoned for his earlier error by saving brilliantly from Sergio Ramos’s header. And for all the billionaire bluntness of “get the ball to Messi and Mbappé” as a tactic, it is at least a tactic with a certain mesmerising watchability to it.
The Paris fans, bedecked in blue and black and sequestered right under the roof of this giant red orb in the Munich suburbs, carried on drumming and thrumming right to the very end.
With a minute remaining, Serge Gnabry burst clear and made the tie safe. Half a pitch away, Messi sank to his haunches. He knows better than anyone that while Paris has all the time in the world, he does not. – Guardian
