Paris St-Germain have become only the second club in the Champions League era to successfully defend their European title after beating Arsenal in Budapest.
The French champions edged a 1-1 draw before claiming a nervy 4-3 penalty shootout victory to secure back-to-back Champions League crowns.
It backed up their dominant 5-0 victory over Inter Milan in Munich twelve months earlier, confirming PSG’s place among the competition’s elite.
PSG are now only the 10th club across the competition’s 71-year history to win successive European titles, a remarkable achievement in modern football.
They become the first side to retain the trophy since Real Madrid’s three-peat between 2016 and 2018, the only other club to achieve it in the Champions League era.
“I’m mixed,” said boss Luis Enrique after the game. “Excitement, fatigue – everything. But this is the best moment of the season. We are still champs, two in a row, it’s amazing.”
All 10 outfield players who started against Arsenal had also featured in the victory over Inter Milan twelve months before in Munich.
European football journalist Julien Laurens praised the achievement on BBC Radio 5 Live, highlighting the added difficulty of this triumph compared to last season’s final.
“Last season will always be special, but I think they will enjoy this more as they had to dig deep, they had to fight, and they had to come back,” Laurens said.
“Last season was almost a bit too easy against Inter. Back-to-back you join the greatest of all time,” he added, underlining PSG’s growing historical significance.
Laurens also noted PSG’s second Champions League crown “puts them in another dimension” as an organisation competing with football’s all-time greatest clubs.
“Now they are in the conversation with those great teams. Pep [Guardiola] never did it with [Lionel] Messi and Barcelona, or with Manchester City either,” Laurens told BBC Radio 5 Live.
“If you win one it’s great, one and you are happy. But back-to-back is a different story,” he concluded, reinforcing the weight of PSG’s consecutive triumphs.
PSG also scored the most goals in this season’s competition with 45, while recording the highest average possession at 60.5% throughout the campaign.
Their 45 goals equalled the record for most scored in a single edition of the European Cup or Champions League, matching Barcelona’s total from 1999-2000.
Luis Enrique himself joins Bob Paisley, Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti and Zinedine Zidane as only the fifth manager to win three Champions League or European Cup titles.
Journalist Guillem Balague revealed on BBC Radio 5 Live that Luis Enrique was initially reluctant to take the PSG job when first approached in 2023.
“[He said] ‘you are full of stars – I’m not interested’. He was promised [he could] change the culture and the question was different. It wasn’t how can we win the Champions League, it was what kind of football do we want?” Balague said.
“The answer was offensive, attractive and Luis Enrique represented that and he was convinced he could do that,” Balague added, explaining the coach’s eventual commitment to the project.
PSG lost record goalscorer Kylian Mbappe to Real Madrid on a free transfer in 2024, yet the squad has arguably been strengthened as a collective unit since his departure.
“PSG is the team with the fewest yellow cards in Europe’s top leagues. That is a reflection of emotional control and everyone playing for everybody instead of being angry,” said Balague.
“He [Luis Enrique] said before when Mbappe left he prefers five players scoring 10 goals than one scoring 50. This season PSG have 20 different goalscorers. It is a collective approach,” Balague concluded.
Since the start of last season PSG have won eight of the 10 trophies available to them, missing only last summer’s Club World Cup and this campaign’s French Cup.
