Having put out a team to do that, Luis Enrique perhaps put it best.
“You have to congratulate the opponents, the players,” the Paris Saint-Germain coach said after his side’s raucous 5-4 win over Bayern Munich. “I’ve never seen a game with that rhythm before.”
You could say this first leg was unique, given how it set a record for a Champions League semi-final, but there’s somehow more to come. There was even the promise of more to come, as befitting the attacking attitudes that drove this entire spectacle.
“Now we’ll go to Munich to try to win and qualify,” Ousmane Dembele said. “We’re going to attack and Bayern are going to attack.”
Vincent Kompany agreed. “We could have scored more, and that has to give us belief.”
So many others were left with a renewed belief in the sport as it is played.
“Every football fan loves a game like that,” Marquinhos said. That feeling might be all the deeper given the debate about set-pieces and structure that has defined so much of the season, especially in England.
There are some lessons there for the Premier League – but only some.
This was indeed like watching a different sport, as was previewed in these very pages on the morning of the game; There were moments when it certainly didn’t feel like watching 11-a-side football at all, such was that scoreline and also just the general chaos of play.
One of the most captivating elements of the game was how often one of the electric attackers just seemed to be aggressively running straight at goal. It was the source of at least three of the goals, most notably Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s brilliant initial equaliser, as well as Luis Diaz’s run to win the Harry Kane penalty to set it off.
Luis Diaz’s own eventual goal, a luscious strike to make it 5-4, was supremely supplied by Kane’s delightful ball, also had touches of Dennis Bergkamp against Argentina. That’s the level we are talking about in terms of attacking.
One of many other talking points is meanwhile how Liverpool let this Luis Diaz go.
Would he have been able to do this in the more restrained Premier League?
And yet, partly because there were so many goals, there were also so many more debates.
One was shaped by Clarence Seedorf and Wayne Rooney, who lamented the defending. Some of it was pitiful. Manuel Neuer didn’t even make a save, and one of his attempted kick-outs did lead to a PSG goal.
If it seems churlish to discuss that amid so much fun, so much entertainment, one obvious inference from their commentary was to ask how “serious” this game actually was.
There was almost a sense of the very scale of the scoreline removing some of the credibility, as if this wasn’t “real football”.
There is a gloriously simple answer to that. It’s as “serious” as the end result of the Champions League final. The point of all this is to become European champions, after all. It doesn’t get more real than that in club football.
The ends would justify the means, a sentence that feels odd to even say here given that it is more often used about the more pragmatic football anticipated in the other semi-final.
It currently looks like either Bayern or PSG would just blow Arsenal and Atletico Madrid away, but it rarely works out like that in reality. Maybe the real difference, however, is as Kompany said. Both sides believe. They trust in their approach, even with all of the risks.
This is just their way, as so many figures on both sides enthused.
And yet, for all that this will provoke predictions about the future of football, there are fair questions over whether this way is possible in any other setting.
If this 5-4 reminded you of what the game could be, you can’t escape the reality that it partly came out of what the game shouldn’t be.
It was also said here before the game that both Bayern and PSG greatly benefit from their immense financial superiority over their domestic leagues, with one of them a Qatari sportswashing project. There’s always another side to this in the modern game.
That allows them this physical and psychological freshness, as well as the space to commit to this.
Some of it is of course ideological, yes. Luis Enrique has been open about that. Kompany was similarly trying this at Burnley.
Some of it is also circumstance. The Independent understands Premier League coach privately said after the game, it’s a lot more difficult to commit to this when your exhausted players are again playing an expensively assembled defence at the weekend.
And that may have led to another side in this game.
As sensational as the attacking was, it was partly allowed from that dismal defending. It was like these team structures just weren’t prepared for this level of attacking quality. Who would be prepared, you might ask, but it did seem more pronounced.
It was like both sides had forgotten how to defend because they don’t usually have to do it.
That’s why it only offers some lessons for the Premier League.
Still, it would be encouraging for clubs to take the mindset on board. You can see why Sir Jim Ratcliffe would love Luis Enrique at United. Who else might come calling now? Chelsea?
And yet such questions, such technical caveats, feel a little out of step with a game that was mostly about abandon; about going for it.
And they’ve promised to do it all again.
As to who wins at the end of it, PSG feel like they should have killed the tie at 5-2. Luis Diaz’s goal feels like it could be very significant.
A little like one of Kvaratskhelia’s runs, though, it’s almost impossible to know which way this is going to turn.
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