Has there ever been a game of football quite like this? On a luminous, thrilling, slightly crazed night at the Parc des Princes Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich produced something that felt like a different category of human activity altogether.
There were nine goals in Paris, the most ever in a Champions League semi-final first leg, the end result a largely arbitrary 5-4 lead for PSG ahead of next week’s second leg. Most remarkable was the nature of the spectacle itself, which felt like football of the demi-gods, a startling combination of relentless fine point craft, and insatiable attacking thrust.
We came expecting another semi-final in the most pressurised club football competitions ever devised, fine margins, details, moments in between the crush and press. What unfolded was something closer to a piece of art, 90 minutes of adrenal collective improvisation.
Paris was a lovely, crisp, sunlit place before kick-off, the wide, empty streets around the Parc Des Princes humming with an imperious, slightly triumphalist energy. PSG have enjoyed being favourites in this competition. Here the home fans’ pre-match tifo was a slightly awkward antique-style portrait of a marching French army crushing a red-clad Germanic army beneath its heels, which is certainly a bold, and indeed selective take, if we’re really going down the military route between these two nations.
The lessons of Bayern’s victory against PSG earlier in the season – so, so many matches ago – had been stark and wholly pragmatic. Sit on Vitinha, which is easier said than done, given he’s basically human WD40, able to slip and slide and twirl in the tiniest of spaces. And press high, be bold, feed your own attack.
And from the start both teams just tore into this game, taking huge hungry bites out of the spaces in front of them, attacking with an astonishing level of craft and intensity. Five goals in the opening 45 minutes followed. Breathless, bold, fiercely comminuted football. Who knew this was allowed?
Bayern started well. Michael Olise drifted past Nuno Mendes at the first opportunity, a wide player who doesn’t so much beat you as politely crop you out of the picture. Marquinhos was booked for parking himself in the way of a rapid Luis Díaz break. And even in those opening exchanges this was already a beautiful game of football, high quality, but also vertical, hungry, attack-facing.
Bayern’s opening goal came on 17 minutes. The straight-line running of Diaz made it, funnelling the ball with real purpose into the PSG half, exchanging passes with Olise, before being tripped by an over-stretching Willian Pacho.
Harry Kane absorbed the vast rolling boos around the Parc, paused, paused again, and rolled the ball into the corner as Safonov dived the other way. It was Kane’s 13th Champions League goal this season, nudging him up on the shoulder of Kylian Mbappé as top scorer.
It should have been two moments later as Kane played a lovely soft pass that put Oliseh right in on goal, only to see his shot well saved as Matvey Safonov rushed out.
Ousmane Dembélé missed badly, put through on goal by a long pass from Achraf Hakimi. But with 24 minutes gone it was 1-1. This was a moment to enter the Khvicha Kvaratskhelia zone. Given the ball in an inside channel, the world’s most misleadingly bedraggled high grade creative attacker cranked the throttle, charging in that barbarian-at-the-gates style at the retreating Bayern defence, zig-zagged inside and curled a lovely low shot into the far corner.
Both teams just kept on running, into the clinches. Just past the half hour Olise breezed past Mendes again and crossed from the goal line, the ball deflected onto the near post. A minute later PSG took the lead from a corner, João Neves wrenching his neck and producing a sensational header across goal and into the corner.
It was giddy, breathless, adrenal stuff. And with 40 minutes gone it was 2-2. This time it was Olise’s turn to do something outlandish, although only in his own understatedly graceful way. He took the ball in a central position, four PSG defenders ahead of him, and just drifted into the space that was suddenly there, glaringly obvious now he mentions it, and produced a no-backlift spank into somewhere close to the centre of the goal, two seconds of frictionless attacking craft in the middle of all that heat and noise.
Somehow a magical first half still wasn’t finished. In injury time PSG had a penalty, awarded after a VAR check on an Alphonso Davies handball from a driven cross. Dembélé buried the kick. The score was 3-2 as the teams walked off, though frankly it could have been anything at all at that point.
The second half began at a more measured pace, which is to say, still insanely breakneck. On 56 minutes it was 4-2 to PSG, as for the first time, the game fell apart a little. Hakimi found a huge corridor of space down the right. His cross evaded the Raft of the Medusa style grapple in the middle, Dembélé dummying over the ball, for Kvaratskhelia, massively unmarked, to spank in his second. On 58 minutes Dembélé made it 5-2, given far too much space to jink and hit a shot in off the near post.
Bayern seemed to have evaporated at that point, pulled all over the pitch, dying in the heat. This PSG team has these concerted surges, its sustained intensity remarkable at times like these.
All over then. Or apparently not. Within 10 minutes the score had gone from 5-2 back to 5-4. First Dayot Upamecano headed in a floated free kick. Then Díaz scored from a lovely floated Kane pass, jinking inside then out and smashing the ball into the corner.
It might have ended 5-5 as Bayern pressed late on. Instead there was sustained applause for both teams at the final whistle, and a second leg that looks perfectly poised.
