PSG have FINALLY figured out how to win the Champions League – and Europe should be terrified! Winners and losers as Desire Doue and Luis Enrique’s young guns secure immortality while Simone Inzaghi’s ageing Inter stars are shown up on the biggest stage

The 2025 Champions League final looked too close to call. Paris Saint-Germain had beaten one Premier League team after another on their way to the final, but Inter had shown remarkable reserves of resilience and no end of quality in beating Barcelona in the semis.

Consequently, an epic and, more importantly, even encounter was anticipated at the Allianz Arena on Saturday.

What we witnessed, though, was a brutal beat-down, as PSG finally claimed their first European Cup with a devastating – and record-breaking – 5-0 rout of Inter, whose famed defence was no match for Luis Enrique’s wonderful array of wingers.

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  WINNER: Desire Doue

  Luis Enrique had one major selection call to make before the game: Desire Doue or Bradley Barcola on the right wing? Both had been in fine form, but Barcola was coming off the back of a terrific two-goal showing in last week’s Coupe de France win over Reims.

  However, Luis Enrique went with the 19-year-old Doue, and that decision paid off spectacularly.

  Doue made history inside the opening quarter of the game by becoming the youngest player to both score and assist in a Champions League final. When he effectively killed the game as a contest in the second half with a wonderfully composed finish, he became the first player ever to be directly involved in three goals in the fixture.

  Consequently, it’s genuinely hard to think how Doue can top this performance – but it should be absolutely thrilling watching him try. Indeed, before the game, some neutrals were lamenting the absence of Lamine Yamal from the showpiece, but Doue proved that there’s more than one outstanding teenage talent in the game right now.

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    LOSER: Federico Dimarco

    Federico Dimarco’s shoddy defensive work has been a cause of increasing concern this season, and we saw precisely why on the game’s opening goal, with Dimarco playing both Doue and Hakimi onside by taking up a far deeper position in the area than any of his team-mates.

    There was obviously an element of fortune about PSG’s second, as Doue’s deflected effort could have gone anywhere, but Dimarco, who was torn to shreds by Yamal in the semi-finals, was once again at fault for cowardly turning his back on the ball.

    As a result, Inter became the first team to concede twice in the opening 20 minutes of a Champions League final – and Dimarco was the main reason why.

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      WINNER: Achraf Hakimi

      Achraf Hakimi demonstrated his enduring affection for Inter by refusing to celebrate his 12th-minute tap-in, but that didn’t make it that much easier for Nerazzurri supporters to take. The Morocco international rather personifies the vast difference in these two clubs’ economic situations, as Inter had to sell Hakimi to PSG in the summer of 2021 in order to balance the books.

      Hakimi was a very good player back then – as he proved by winning the Scudetto during his one and only season at San Siro – but he’s gone to a whole other level over the past four years.

      With his strike in Munich, Hakimi equalled Ian Harte’s record for most goal involvements for a defender across a single Champions League campaign (nine), while he was also excellent as ever in defence. There aren’t many more complete footballers in the game today and he would be a most worthy recipient of this year’s Ballon d’Or (if such prizes were ever given to right-backs!).

      Source Goal.com