In soccer, great offense does not necessarily imply terrible defense. It's a hard truth to retain in the face of a scoreline like 5-4, but what Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich did in the first leg of their Champions League semifinal was one of the purest distillations of attacking soccer ecstasy that I, or you, or anyone, has ever seen, and no amount of hemming and hawing about defensive lapses will ruin the memory of watching the two best teams in Europe throw everything they had at each other. It was simply glorious.
It makes sense that a semifinal between teams that feature the two best attacks in the world, attacks so terrifying at full health that it's possible to argue that the one that just hit 100 combined goals this season—only the fifth time that has happened, and only the third trio to do it, ever—is the weaker one. That would be Bayern's trident of Harry Kane (how wild would it be to see him win the Champions League the same season Tottenham Hotspur gets relegated?), Michael Olise, and Luis Díaz, all of whom scored on Tuesday night in Paris. You could do much, much worse even at this stage of the Champions League than that trio, but it's also theoretically possible to do better, and I'm relatively sure, though not certain, that PSG's striker-less trinity of Désiré Doué, Ousmane Dembélé, and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia is the one combination that is better. (For their part, the PSG trio did not all score, as Doué only had two assists, but both Dembélé and Kvaratskhelia notched two a piece, so it just about balances out.)
It would be easy to believe that, super-attacks or not, nine goals is just too much, and must have meant that the defenses crapped the bed for 90-plus minutes. Well, no! Let's rapid-fire each goal, in fact, because I think it's safe to say that only the first of the nine was down to a defensive shortcoming, rather than the ever-entertaining process of testing the hypothesis that My Cool Guys Are Just Better Than Your Cool Guys.
- Harry Kane (17') - This would be the one goal I would safely blame on a defender; PSG center-back Willian Pacho slides in a bit recklessly on Díaz, and Kane converts the penalty with ease.
- Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (24') - I mean, what do you do against this from the Georgian? While he does beat Josip Stanisic in a foot race, the Bayern right back recovers well and covers the potential cut outside for a cross, but Kvaratskhelia simply takes the ball back to his right and curls an inch-perfect shot past Manuel Neuer.
- João Neves (33') - Losing one of the smallest guys on the field on a corner might hint at a defensive lapse from Bayern, but it's hard to blame the defense for Dembélé's precisely placed cross or Neves heading the ball with so much power and accuracy across goal.
- Michael Olise (41') - If you get mad at Marquinhos for back-pedaling one step too many, instead of just marveling at the speed and power that Olise gets on this shot with so little room to wind up, then you might just want something different from soccer than I do. (Admittedly, this is some pretty bad goalkeeping, though.) Next!
- Ousmane Dembélé (45+4') - While I think the defenses mostly came out of a match with nine goals with their respective dignities intact, the same can't be said for VAR, which contributed to a wildly unfair penalty call against Alphonso Davies right before half. The ball does hit his arm, but it comes off his thigh first, and his arm was in a totally fair position. The call on the field was no penalty, but after a VAR review, it had to be given. It's a shame, really, but I sure as hell am not blaming Davies for this one; this was just a call that soccer as a sport has to live with now, unfortunately. Anyway, Dembélé converted.
- Halftime!
- Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (56') - Please just watch this Vitinha pass to a sprinting Achraf Hakimi on repeat. That is a thing of beauty.
- Ousmane Dembélé (58') - One thing that always stuns me watching PSG is how fast and efficient the team's counter-attacks are. The Parisians never play too many passes on the way from their own box into an attacking position. Earlier in the match, Doué put the ball in the back of the net off of a four-pass counter (it was ruled out for offside), and in the 58th minute, a two-pass sequence got the ball from just outside the PSG box into the back of the Bayern net. Kvaratskhelia's long ball put Doué into space, and then the 20-year-old held it just long enough to give Dembélé room to fire off a near-post shot off the post and in. Great stuff.
- Dayot Upamecano (65') - Let's take a break from praising all of these attackers in order to big-up Upamecano, the oft-maligned Bayern center back who had a good game in defense (he stopped at least two counter-attacks single-handedly, and I don't put him at fault for any of the PSG goals) and also scored the goal that got Bayern back into tie. This wasn't anything particularly special, and it's certainly the least impressive non-penalty goal from Tuesday, but Upamecano timed his run off a Joshua Kimmich free kick perfectly and juuuuust nudged the ball on target.
- Luis Díaz (68') - Last but not least, my name brother Díaz scored what I thought was the best goal on this bonkers night. With Marquinhos draped all over him, Díaz timed his run off of a Kane guided missile of a through ball, brought it down with perfect control, and then hit the nastiest fake shot to destabilize Marquinhos just enough to then curl the ball into the net. This was video game shit, except even in a video game, I couldn't be as composed as Díaz was in the box. Gorgeous goal from a player who has ascended to a new level since moving to Germany last summer.
(Allow me a brief rant about something not directly related to this match: The new "auto-dubbing" on these YouTube highlights is horrid! Please make sure to swap the audio track back to the original Spanish, rather than let YouTube's disconcerting AI robovoice dub it into emotionless English. Ok, back to the blog.)
Phew, that was a lot! Watching this match on Tuesday was an exercise in stamina and controlling hyperbole. After every goal, I wanted to scream that this was the best Champions League match I've ever seen, and then it only got better. It reminded me a lot of the second leg of last year's Barcelona-Inter Milan semi; that match had higher stakes, being the deciding leg of the tie, but this match was, in my opinion, played at a higher level by better teams. When I think of the potential of the Champions League, I think of Barca-Inter, but from now on, when I think of the unthinkable, the type of match that restores my faith that soccer is the best sport in the world, that no amount of VAR or FIFA corruption or whatever the fuck is going to happen at the World Cup this summer can ruin the magic that happens when two teams decide to just play all gas, no brakes.
Not for the same reasons, certainly, but I will think of 5-4 PSG-Bayern in much the same way that I look back on the Argentina-France 2022 World Cup final: A match that synthesizes every beautiful thing about this sport into one euphoric contest. However, if, after watching this gladiatorial combat of high-flying attacks, you still yearn for a rough-and-tumble slugfest reminiscent of years gone by, I have some good news for you: Arsenal-Atlético Madrid kicks off at 3 p.m. ET on Wednesday.
