Europe's fallen giants thrust into arena of sudden death

It was, it seemed, the future of the Champions League. Except for a couple of details.

- RICHARD JOLLY

One was that, due to Covid, the Etihad Stadium was deserted. And the other was that, in May, the ground staff still had to shovel the hailstones off the pitch. So it was scarcely the picture of glamour the fixture list suggested.

But in other respects, that 2021 showdown looked the shape of things to come: a semi-final between Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain. For some, it was Abu Dhabi against Qatar; for others, a battle of the rising forces, the nouveaux riches who were coming to dominate their domestic leagues. PSG had reached the final of the previous season’s Champions League. City were to succeed them as runners-up after a last-four meeting decided by a Parisian, Riyad Mahrez.

That told a tale in itself. Even as PSG looked to import the game’s biggest stars, they overlooked much of the talent produced in their own backyard. It could prove their undoing: Bayern Munich’s 2020 final winner came courtesy of another boy from the banlieue, in Kingsley Coman. The newer PSG, shorn of Lionel Messi and Neymar, while also losing the local lad Kylian Mbappe, seem constructed as a reaction to their past.