Rampant Paris Saint-Germain blow away Inter Milan for Champions League glory

Paris Saint-Germain, Champions League winners.

At long last the club that was transformed by Qatari billions and bought and sold a succession of the world’s greatest players in an extravagant bid to get to the top have their hands on the big one.

European club soccer’s grandest prize has a new home after PSG thrashed Inter Milan 5-0 in Saturday’s final in Munich.

The trophy that not even Lionel Messi, Neymar or Kylian Mbappe could deliver to the French club was finally claimed by Spanish coach Luis Enrique.

Fitting then that Desire Doue, the 19-year-old French forward emblematic of the club’s new generation, was the chief inspiration. He became the third teenager to score in a Champions League final, following Patrick Kluivert and Carlos Alberto.

Doue scored twice and set up another goal in little over an hour before being substituted in the second half.

Achraf Hakimi, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and substitute Senny Mayulu, the fourth teenager to ever score in a final added to Doue’s double as PSG recorded the biggest win in a final in the Champions League’s 69-year history.

Each of the previous four finals held in Munich also produced first-time winners ? Nottingham Forest in 1979, Marseille in 1993, Borussia Dortmund in 1997 and Chelsea in 2012.

The Champions League is the ultimate barometer of the continent’s elite clubs and up until now PSG has been a flashy contender that always came up short.

That all changed at Allianz Arena, the home of Bayern Munich, one of the titans of Europe, and a fitting stage for PSG’s crowning moment. Not least because it was against Bayern that they lost their only other Champions League final in 2020 in an empty stadium in Lisbon where fans were locked out because of the pandemic.

On this occasion, thousands of PSG supporters were there to revel in the moment, waving flags, lighting flares and drowning out their rivals from Inter, many of whose supporters left the stadium long before the final whistle.

It took just 12 minutes for the French champions to go ahead with a move of speed and precision when Vitinha’s threaded pass into the box found the feet of Doue. The forward could have shot, but instead slid in former Inter player Hakimi to tap into an open net.

Eight minutes later and the lead was doubled ? though this time it relied more on luck than precision as Doue’s shot from the right of the box deflected off Federico Dimarco and past Inter goalkeeper Yann Sommer.

He got his second in the 63rd, sliding the ball into the bottom corner when through on goal.

Kvaratskhelia added a fourth 10 minutes later and Mayulu then found the back of the net in the 86th, just two minutes after coming on.