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Inter Milan's Outclassed Old Men Left To Mourn The Death Of A Champions League Dream
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Your support makes all the difference.Read moreReach a certain age and it isn't uncommon to develop a greater interest in history. Inter Milan's old-timers made it: the heaviest defeat ever in a European Cup or Champions League final, a rout still greater than the spectacular scorelines in 1960, 1974, 1989 and 1994, a thrashing that removed two of AC Milan's routs from the record books.
This was a performance that will echo through the ages. Not by them, however, but to them. Inter conceded three goals to teenagers, Desire Doue's double followed by the historic fifth from Senny Mayulu.
Inter are old. It isn't a secret. Barcelona and Bayern Munich probably noticed it, and Arsenal and Manchester City before them. Yet only Paris Saint-Germain succeeded in making them look old. The newest champions of Europe won a generation game so emphatically and dramatically it felt like a case of elder abuse.
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PSG celebrate after tearing Inter apart (Getty Images)In a Champions League final of opposites – European Cup winners in the 1960s against the club not founded until 1970, bargain buys against big spenders, old against young – the team built for the future discovered their time is now. The side trying to resist the passing of time were overwhelmed by the waves of Parisian attacks. The biggest game of their lives proved one of the worst. It finished with them stood, heads bowed, in front of an emptying away end.
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Inter are left bereft by defeat (AP)Their throwback campaign ended with Inter dominated and demoralised. No one else had done this to them, to the obdurate old-timers. Their only defeat in 14 European games this season had come to Bayer Leverkusen. Go on consistency of results in Europe and group-stage finish and they might have been deemed favourites. Yet PSG's 2025 surge has shown a team on the rise, a side imbued with talent and explosiveness.
Then there was Inter, carrying the hopes of everyone who is desperate for their best days to not be confined to the past. On average this side was 30 years and 19 days old, more than a decade the senior of Doue. A man born after the 2005 Champions League final struck twice in the 2025 showpiece. He was a symbolic scorer.
PSG showed the merits of youth and pace. Inter were outnumbered on the flanks, overpowered in midfield. There was room behind their defence, outside it, anywhere and everywhere. It was not a day to espouse the merits of the 3-5-2 formation. Not when Inter seemed to have fewer players in every part of the pitch. That is what speed can do. Inter's positional sense proved no asset when subjected to an assault. They were scythed apart by a team too slick and quick for them.
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PSG scythed Inter apart, with 18-year-old Senny Mayulu scoring the fifth (Getty Images)
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Desire Doue, 19, is sublime for the Parisians (Reuters)PSG made their trademark fast start; they have scored in the first dozen minutes against each of Liverpool, Aston Villa, Arsenal and Inter in the knockout stages. But they sustained it, too.
Behind for only 16 minutes in the Champions League, Inter trailed after 12 and were two down after 20, five adrift after 90. If their strategy was to use their experience to stay in the game, it was destroyed by the relentlessness of PSG's running, by the elusiveness of Doue and Ousmane Dembele, by the combination of confidence and class.
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And, not least, by Vitinha's capacity to play penetrative forward passes with deceptive ease. One brought Doue's second goal. Another produced PSG's first. The scorer, Achraf Hakimi, was one of the players Inter sold in the cost-cutting as Steven Zhang's ownership unravelled, as Antonio Conte's spending spree required a return. And yet, four years later, those past financial problems bit Inter, courtesy of a club whose budget can seem limitless. Hakimi was apologetic; PSG's later celebrations were far more emphatic.
In fairness, Denzel Dumfries, Hakimi's replacement, was a rarity in bringing dynamism to this Inter team. Yet Inter's wing-backs are often a strength; PSG used the space behind them to turn them into a weakness. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, the more charismatic of dribblers, ran at Dumfries. PSG had still more joy on the opposite flank, helped by the ability to transfer the ball from one wing to another.
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Denzel Dumfries replaced Achraf Hakimi at Inter but endured defeat (Getty Images)And this was a disaster for Federico Dimarco, the Interista; he has a Scudetto tattoo, but he may never need a Champions League one. Hakimi escaped behind him for the first goal; he deflected in Doue's shot for the second. Perhaps it didn't help Dimarco that the left of Inter's midfield trio was 36-year-old Henrikh Mkhitaryan, a player so old he was born behind the Iron Curtain.
But still younger than Francesco Acerbi, who was down on his haunches after Kvaratskhelia made it four. A 37-year-old required protection but Inter were ragged, wretched.
It seemed a belated recognition of their problems when manager Simone Inzaghi's first changes were to bring on players aged 23 and 24 yet the latter, Yann Bisseck, was promptly hamstrung. Inzaghi was dressed, as ever, like a minor character from The Sopranos at a funeral. As Inter unravelled, he could mourn the death of a dream.
Why The Champions League Is Just The Start For PSG's New Breed Of Winners
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Your support makes all the difference.Read moreIn the afterglow of victory, Luis Enrique exchanged his trademark black top for a T-shirt bearing the message "Champions of Europe". So did many another. The temptation is to wonder if Paris Saint-Germain got them printed in 2011, when Qatar Sports Investments bought the club, and had them stored in a cupboard in the Parc des Princes ever since.
An ambition was finally realised in Munich; impressively so. After the annual collapses, the near misses, the late goals from Sergi Roberto and Marcus Rashford came the cathartic 5-0 demolition of Internazionale, one of the genuine aristocrats of European football humiliated by the nouveaux riches with designs on becoming part of the establishment.
It transpired that Arne Slot was ahead of the curve in calling PSG the best team in Europe. Over the subsequent months, many others reached that conclusion, too. The club who used to choke at the business end of the Champions League peaked when it mattered most; in itself, that is proof of the transformative impact of Luis Enrique. His cultural revolution has entailed ending the search for proven winners and building a young side who instead won.
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Luis Enrique lifts the Champions League trophy (AP)But it can be difficult to shed a club's identity. There was something quintessentially PSG about last season's 4-1 battering at Newcastle, and their semi-final defeat to Borussia Dortmund, when they hit the woodwork so often it needed a concussion test, but did not find the net. This year felt more of the same. Some 50 minutes into their seventh group game, PSG were – somehow – 2-0 down to Manchester City, outside the top 24, facing the ignominy of their worst European campaign under Qatari ownership.
It instead became the best. PSG's modern Champions League history has been an extended exercise in schadenfreude. In Germany, home of the concept, the startlingly brilliant display of Desire Doue could not camouflage who was missing: Kylian Mbappe. It is no coincidence PSG finally won the Champions League without Lionel Messi, Neymar and Mbappe. There wasn't a superstar shortcut to glory.
It is instructive, if there will be an annual procession to it now. It is easy to predict so after a final, yet such forecasts often do not stand the test of time. Manchester City's 2023 triumph did not herald several more: if they regain the trophy, it will be with a very different team. In the last dozen years, only Real Madrid have won more than one Champions League. Right now, however, PSG look far better placed than many other supposed contenders – City, Inter, Bayern Munich – to be celebrating again in Budapest next summer.
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Marquinhos lifts the trophy with his teammate (AP)What can be said without fear of contradiction is that PSG are young enough. They will have the resources. What may be pertinent is that they seem to have turned a deficiency – the ease with which they win Ligue Un – into an advantage. For years, the theory was that it did not properly prepare them for Champions League summit clashes. Yet time on the training ground with Luis Enrique and the physicality to blitz opponents can do that.
PSG should see a future in their magnificent midfield. It is frightening how good Doue is even before his 20th birthday. If they can conjure more goals from the compelling Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, he will seem unstoppable. It may mean that questions instead surround their unlikely talisman. Luis Enrique argued Ousmane Dembele should win the Ballon d'Or for his defensive work alone. But after 28 goals in five years, can Dembele have another 33-goal season, or was this the most wondrous of one-offs?
PSG's new striker-less model suggests that, whatever the answer, Luis Enrique will want wingers who can interchange positions and runners who can work. It helps, too, that PSG no longer overlook the cradles of talent that are Paris or Ligue Un. Doue was bought from Rennes, Bradley Barcola from Lyon. It proved a better business model than raiding the Nou Camp, beyond getting the transformative manager who is a Barcelona alumnus and who became the seventh manager to win the competition with two different clubs. He altered the ethos. PSG stopped copying and found their own way.
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Ousmane Dembele (left) played a supporting role in Paris St Germain's resounding victory (Mike Egerton/PA) (PA Wire)In one respect, they helped remedy a historical imbalance: this was just a second European Cup win for a French club. In another, they are a global club who have ruined the competitiveness of Ligue Un. It is the fifth domestic league in Europe, but a distant fifth. With its diminishing television rights, and broadcasters struggling to make it pay, other clubs can be financially challenged, often forced to sell.
And yet the initial French surge in the Champions League this season came from the relatively impoverished. PSG underachieved in the group stages. The rest overachieved. Lille defeated Real and Atletico Madrid, Monaco beat Barcelona and Aston Villa.
Brest took more points than Juventus and City. But they were beaten 10-0 on aggregate by PSG when the force from the capital gelled in the playoffs to reach the knockout phase. Then PSG took aim across the English Channel, eliminating Liverpool, Villa and Arsenal. The Italian challengers from Inter were then vanquished, PSG's arc of triumph complete.
Carnival Atmosphere In Paris After Champions League Success
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Your support makes all the difference.Read moreThousands of fans lined the Champs Elysees on Sunday as Paris St Germain celebrated their Champions League triumph.
PSG brought the trophy back to Paris for the first time after thrashing Inter Milan 5-0 in Munich on Saturday night – the record margin of victory in a Champions League final.
The number of fans on the Champs Elysees were limited to 100,000 after violence marred PSG's stunning victory.
Two people died and the French interior ministry reported 559 arrests were made across France during the celebrations.
But there was a carnival atmosphere in Paris as fans waved flags, lit flares and belted out the Queen anthem 'We Are The Champions'.
An open top double-decker bus in the PSG colours of blue, red and white, with the words 'Champions D'Europe' written on it, made its way slowly down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe.
PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi, chairman of club owners Qatar Sports Investments, and head coach Luis Enrique – who won the Champions League in 2015 with Barcelona and became the seventh manager to lift the trophy with two different clubs – led the celebrations.
The trophy was passed down the bus to every player, who were proudly wearing their winner's medals.
Defender Presnel Kimpembe grabbed the microphone to sing "Ici c'est Paris!" (This is Paris) and captain Marquinhos urged FIFA to reward Ousmane Dembele for his efforts by saying "Ousmane, Ballon d'Or."
France forward Dembele scored eight goals in PSG's European campaign and was named by UEFA as the best player in this season's Champions League.
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After the parade, the players and staff were received at the Elysee Palace by French president Emmanuel Macron.
"At last it's Paris," said Macron. "A lot of people know that as a teenage, 32 years ago, I was supporting the OM (Olympique Marseille) team in Munich.
"Now the Paris team has carried off the Champions League and you did it in a most sublime, fantastic way.
"You brought Paris to the top of Europe and you gave us all something to live for and be excited about together.
"It is a team with willpower, ambition and a sense of solidarity.
"That's the football we like to see and that's the football you showed us – and I would like to say to Luis Enrique, 'We owe a lot to you for this victory'.
"You did it, finally Paris won, and this victory owes a lot to you Mr President (Al-Khelaifi). For 14 years you've been through a lot and you've always defended the club, the city and French football.
"There were years where it was hard for Qatar, but they kept believing in PSG."
The celebrations will conclude at the Parc des Princes on Sunday evening with a trophy presentation in front of the club's season ticket holders.
There will also be a closing lap of honour from the players.
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