🔍 The UCL's Finest Hour

Have you recovered from Tuesday yet? The highest praise I’ve heard for what PSG and Bayern Munich produced in the first leg of their Champions League semifinal came from my friend Jack, who earnestly declared that it was the first time in a long time he had watched a game without constantly checking his phone. It wasn’t a match for a second screen.

The following few days, on the other hand, have been prime second-screen territory. Yes, it was a spectacular display of attacking intent, carefully crafted and honed for months, and produced at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars in transfer fees and player salaries. It may well have been one of the greatest games of all time.

But that should not distract us one bit from the fact that its primary purpose was, in fact, to act as source material for an ongoing debate about what makes a great game, and whether its primary purpose was really to make the Premier League look bad. Or good, I suppose, depending on your perspective.

We had, as Bayern Munich lofted the final cross of the game into the PSG penalty area, already had 94 minutes. There had been 21 shots, two penalties and nine goals. It had been heady and breathless and unrelenting, a vision of what football can be and maybe ought to be, so good that at some point it started to feel like it was bad for you.

And there was still more: that cross brought the last meaningful act of the game, Joshua Kimmich steering a header towards the PSG goal and, for a moment, that sensation that of course it would go in, that narrative demand dictated there would be an injury-time equalizer. Willian Pacho duly appeared, diverting it away, a man with absolutely no respect for the finer points of the plot.

It is not especially controversial to suggest that this was the best game of the season. By some combination of the scoreline, the stakes, the quality of the players on show and the nature of both teams’ approaches – the harnessing of extraordinary individual brilliance in the name of collective strategy – guarantee that. 

A better question is whether it should be regarded as the greatest Champions League game of all time. There is no shortage of candidates for that title, obviously: the 2005 final, now known by the shorthand ‘Istanbul’; Barcelona’s remontada against PSG in 2017; the meeting between Manchester United and Real Madrid, in 2003, the match that reportedly convinced Roman Abramovich to buy Chelsea.

Those sorts of questions do not have answers, obviously. They exist, instead, for the two reasons that everything exists: to give people something to talk about that is not their feelings and/or fears, and so that media publications – both legacy and digital – can feel the fleeting warmth of a few hundred eyeballs.

Attempting to work out where Tuesday exists in that hierarchy is both theoretical and meaningless. There are no objective criteria that can be used to judge it relative to Tottenham’s comeback against Ajax in 2019 or Inter’s victory against Barcelona in the semifinal last year. It is all a matter of context, of taste. Spurs’ win, as an example, was far more dramatic. It was not nearly as technically accomplished.

It was that, perhaps, that stood out most on Tuesday: the sense that we were watching a form of football so pure that after a while it started to feel almost like a different sport, one played according to much the same rules but with startlingly different rewards. Both teams seemed to have a different understanding of risk to the accepted standard, different definitions of virtue and strength, wildly outlandish ideas about what they should be trying to do.

This was the point at which the Premier League, as the kids say, caught a few strays. You will have noticed that most Premier League games do not look like PSG playing Bayern. Not only that: none of the teams in the Premier League, currently, really give the impression that they are even trying to make their games look like PSG playing Bayern.

There are several reasons for this. First: the equation for PSG and Bayern is changed because of the domestic dominance they enjoy. For both teams, the Champions League is the primary focus of their season. They can afford to rest players, as PSG in particular has done, in order to keep them fresh for the latter stages of this competition.

That is a luxury that is not available to those clubs mired in the muck and bullets of English football. They may have more money than almost anyone else in the game, but so do their domestic opponents; they cannot choose to rotate their squads at the weekend to make sure they are refreshed for midweeks. They look like they are playing a different game because to some extent they are. It is one where everyone is well-rested.

That is only part of it. It is patronizing, bordering on sort of xenophobic, to suggest that PSG and Bayern get to play training games every weekend. Marseille and Stuttgart and Hamburg and Lille are not amateur teams. They have good players. They try. But they cannot afford the quality – in no small part, as Barney Ronay has pointed out, because the Premier League keeps buying their players – to go toe-to-toe with the superclubs in their midst. 

And so Bayern and PSG must, by necessity, accentuate their attacking capabilities; there is no point in them investing heavily in defensive players. They have to commit their resources to ensuring they can play their way through teams. The result is two sides who not only attack by inclination, but by necessity; they do not, at this stage, know any other way.

There is one other element, too, one rooted in the veneration of the defensive, of the lingering ghost of the Victorian idea that football that is too entertaining is in some way irresponsible, childish, silly. England is inherently suspicious of any team that decides the best way to defend is to attack, or any manager willing to sacrifice some of the former for the latter; it is, in part, why Trent Alexander-Arnold was always treated as a sort of rare and potentially dangerous species.

It was curious that Clarence Seedorf, a guest on Amazon’s coverage of the game here, queried whether a team playing so openly could win the Champions League. Not just because one of these two teams will be in the final – and probably enter it as favorite – but because this is now very clearly established as the way to win this tournament.

Chelsea, in 2021, may well have been the last side to lift European football’s ultimate honor by taking a more cautious approach since, well, Chelsea in 2012. For most of the last 20 years – since Seedorf himself was playing in finals for AC Milan – the Champions League has been a place that rewards endeavor and ambition and adventure more than caution and grit.

And that is, I think, as it should be. That was the real message of Tuesday, the one that remained once the wonder had subsided. For all the wealth of and fascination with the Premier League, it is the Champions League that is the game’s true forge of greatness, the place where football takes on its ultimate form. It is, even now, only really the Champions League that can produce this.

Frank Lampard’s Coventry City, to give the club its proper name, has already made it. For the first time in a quarter of a century, Coventry will play in the Premier League next season. To fans of a certain vintage – the one that includes me – that return brings with it a sense of order being restored. Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, Coventry was a top-flight mainstay. To us, it is where the club belongs.

The matter of who will join Lampard’s team will be half-answered on Saturday, when the second automatic promotion slot is settled. The likeliest scenario is that it will be occupied by Ipswich Town, relegated a year ago and now requiring just one win at home to Queens Park Rangers to scramble back at the first attempt. 

The more intriguing one, though, is that any stumble by Kieran McKenna’s side may allow Millwall to be promoted instead. In a sporting sense, that would be an extraordinary achievement: Millwall does not have access to the vast funds of money given to teams that have recently tumbled out of the Premier League in order to cushion their landing; the club has not been in the top flight since 1990.

In a cultural one, though, it would be even more compelling. Despite expending considerable amounts of funding and energy into changing its image – and doing valuable community work in its corner of south-east London – Millwall stands as a resolutely ungentrified club. It is a glimpse, to some extent, of what both football and London used to be, for both good and for ill. 

The Den, its home stadium, remains probably England’s most intimidating venue; the last time I was there, admittedly some time ago, I saw more police than I have at any other game I’ve attended, up to and including Fenerbahce against Galatasaray. Millwall, in my mind, is the polar opposite of everything the Premier League represents. Seeing the club among the elite would be jarring and gripping in equal measure.

Rog and Rory break down an intense football weekend in the Premier League and the FA Cup. They discuss Arsenal's 1-0 win over Newcastle which answers some questions and raises others ahead of the final days of the season. Plus, Man City and Chelsea escape their semi-final matches to set up a not-so-exciting FA Cup final. Plus, are we heading into an all-time great relegation battle between... five teams??

Watch on YouTube or listen here.

This is another of those weekends where we are, blissfully, spoiled for choice. I’m not sure there’s any great value in telling you to keep an eye on Arsenal (at home to Fulham on Saturday) or Manchester City (away at Everton on Monday), or even on Tottenham (away at Aston Villa on Sunday). You know that already.

And, to be honest, as much as Manchester United against Liverpool is and always will be England’s blue-riband game – the Premier League’s equivalent of the clásico – this is not an especially interesting iteration. Liverpool, by my slightly obsessive calculations, need a win and a draw from four games to make the Champions League. United has probably made it already. This one is just for pride.

So, this week, let’s look slightly further afield. Scotland has featured rather more in this section than I probably anticipated, and Monday has another candidate: Hearts host Rangers in the latest installment of Europe’s best title race. The Bundesliga has a low-key classic on Saturday, too: a shootout for a Champions League place between Hoffenheim and Stuttgart.

And a word for the game that sits on top of my bucket list. The Greek league splits into championship and relegation groups at this stage of the season, too; it’s in the former that PAOK faces Olympiacos on Sunday. There’s a Champions League spot on the line, but that is immaterial; Toumba, PAOK’s stadium, supposedly has the best atmosphere in Europe, and it saves its best for visits from the country’s biggest club. Find a way to watch the pre-match, at least, if you can.

I’d be fascinated to know quite what Liam Rosenior made of Chelsea’s performance in last week’s FA Cup semifinal. All that tactical discipline and strategic organization and admirable work rate: funny, he must have thought, how all of that only appeared after he’d been fired, 107 days into his six-year contract. Not laugh-out-loud funny. Just… funny.

On the subject of Chelsea, Paul Rerecich wrote: “I’ve recently come to think of Chelsea, Man Utd, and Tottenham as the managerial poisoned-chalice clubs, the clubs where promising managerial careers go to die. They're the ones chasing Arsenal, Liverpool, and Man City. Yet, their upper management teams seem more concerned with spreadsheets than tactics boards. When a bad run of results threatens their projected revenues figures, they panic and do the same thing they always do: fire the manager, all while maintaining they have a long-term strategy.”

This is absolutely right, Paul, but I’m not sure they’re quite so poisoned as logic suggests. It’s baffling to me that, this summer, some clearly very able and very smart manager will accept Chelsea’s offer of the head coach position: Andoni Iraola, or Marco Silva, or Xabi Alonso. It’s hard not to wonder whether these people will never learn.

But I’m not sure that’s how managers look at it. It’s explained, I think, by three equally relevant factors. One is money: getting fired by Chelsea is a lucrative business. One is pride: all managers, ultimately, have the self-confidence to believe that they will be different, that they are uniquely talented enough to tame the beast.

And the third is an absence of consequence. Chelsea is so badly run that I’m not sure failing there is held against you the next time you go for a job. The same was once true of PSG, and even Real Madrid. Look at Unai Emery, or Thomas Tuchel, or even Alonso. Everyone else seems to have agreed that falling short at some clubs, at some points, is inevitable. They do not count, not really. Chelsea is in that category, and that means it is all reward, and no risk. If you succeed, great. If not, here’s $5 million and no reputational damage. There’s no poison there.

That’s all for this week. As ever, please do keep your correspondence coming – ideas, suggestions, questions, quibbles – to [email protected]. And if you’ve read this far, I’m assuming you’ve enjoyed it, so why not forward it to a friend? Or a few friends? Or everyone you know, if you think they might like it too? Getting the word out there really helps us out.

Take care,
Rory