Paris St.-Germain and Bayern Munich will meet on Sunday in the final of the Champions League, the richest and biggest club competition in European football.
Bayern chased their sixth Champions League title, but their first since 2013. PSG appear in the final for the first time, hoping to become only the second French club – after Olympique Marseille in 1993 – to lift the trophy.
“This is exactly why I came here,” French striker Kylian Mbappé of PSG told reporters on Saturday. “I always said I wanted to make history for my country. This is an opportunity. ”
The final will be played at Benfica’s Estádio da Luz in Lisbon, which, along with Sporting’s stadium in the city, has been the home base of this month’s Champions League pandemic-condensed knockout round.
Bayern Munich have already beaten Barcelona and another French club, Lyon, in Thumps. PSG’s star-studded, Qatari-funded team advanced with a late rally against Atalanta of Italy and a comprehensive dismissal of Germany’s second-best entry, RB Leipzig.
Here’s what you need to know prior to Sunday’s game.
How can I see?
Sunday’s game will be broadcast in the United States on the CBS Sports Network and, in Spanish, on Univision. Television coverage begins at 2:30 p.m. Eastern, but – and this can be important when planning your day – kickoff is at 3:00 p.m.
How did the teams get here?
Sunday’s game is a throwback of sorts: the first meeting in the final since 1998 of teams entering the tournament as home champions.
That, of course, is how it used to be in the days of the old European Cup, when you had to win your home competition just to gain access to the competition. The establishment of the Champions League in 1992 changed all that, and opened the door for extra teams (from the big leagues, mostly) and extra income, but also set the stage for all-Italian, all-German, all-Spanish and all- English finals.
Tradition is still a powerful force – PSG have won seven straight French titles, and Bayern Munich eight in a row in Germany – but you take your nostalgia where you can.
Bayern Munich came out of the group stage an easy winner over Tottenham, Olympiakos and Red Star Belgrade. In the knockouts, it easily outscored Chelsea (7-1 on aggregate), Barcelona (8-2 – ouch!) And Lyon (3-0). Bayern are 10-0 in this year’s league.
PSG also crossed out the group stage, producing five wins and a post-competition in a group that included Real Madrid, Club Brugge and Galatasaray. It overcame a first-leg deficit to drive out Dortmund in the round of 16, and then decided – with two goals after the 90th minute – to defeat Atalanta, 2-1, in their quarter-final in Lisbon. RB Leipzig went much easier (3-0) in the semi-finals on Tuesday.
Unlike Bayern, which can field a handful of players who were present when it won the competition in 2013, PSG have never played in this Champions League final before.
Help me look bad when I’m with my friends later.
Our chief correspondent, Rory Smith, can help you with that. Here is his example:
There is no such thing as a bad Champions League final. This is the culmination of the European season, arguably the single biggest club game of the year (and possibly the biggest annual sporting event on the planet, including Super Bowl). When the stakes are so high, the drama and tension is inherent.
But that does not mean that all Champions League finals are good. Some are overwhelmed by their own significance, and the game itself is expensive and cautious and inhibiting: think 2003, when AC Milan and Juventus produced 120 minutes of football so poorly that both teams would have to be disqualified, if even last year’s effort between Liverpool and Tottenham.
Many turn into exposures, where one team is so apparently superior to the other that the outcome begins to feel in advance: Barcelona, say, in 2009, 2011 and 2015, as Real Madrid in 2017 and 2018.
The true classics are the exceptions: The last few years, perhaps only the exceptional win of Liverpool in 2005, the remarkable opposition of Chelsea in 2012 and the last victory of Bayern, in 2013, could justify this description.
Despite the eeriness of an empty stadium and the fact that it is August, there are reasons to believe that 2020 may deserve a place in the canon. Both Bayern and PSG have star quality: Lewandowski and Davies, Neymar and Mbappé. And the two teams share many other similarities: Both are national champions who play on the front foot, and both are as happy in possession as they are dangerous on the counterpoint. Also, both have a bit of recent experience of losses, terrible attacks and, certainly in the case of Bayern, have some dubious defenses. PSG is built to win this tournament; Bayern is on the verge of a domestic and European treble.
Bayern’s imperial form – particularly Barcelona’s dismantling – was enough for most to assume that the German team is the favorite, but PSG will have seen the chances given by Lyon in the semi-finals ( and even by Barcelona before his column) were made and will have taken heart. Neither team is without its flaws. Both teams have an abundance of strengths. That’s exactly how a Champions League final should be drafted. There’s never a bad. This should remove that beam easily.
Is this game simply not played in the spring?
Yes. But like so many things this year, the coronavirus pandemic changed that.
The Champions League final was originally scheduled for May 30 in Istanbul, but when the tournament stopped in March, halfway through the round of 16, tournament organizers had to draw up a new plan. After some intense lobbying, Turkey was out (Istanbul will get the finals next year) and Portugal was in. Two weeks in Lisbon would decide the biggest prize in European football.
Indeed, as The Times’ Tariq Panja and Rory Smith reported earlier this month, the entire format was scrapped and re-adapted to new needs: isolation, testing, speed and – perhaps most of all – TV. There were rules about where to stay and how many bottles of water would be delivered and even where players could warm up, and where they absolutely, absolutely could not.
“The whole knockout round is actually an abrupt break from history,” Tariq and Rory wrote, “and not one UEFA – the organizer of the competition, and the governing body of European football – is desperate to repeat.”
Instead of months of travel and matches, the eight quarterfinals gather in Lisbon for two weeks of knockout games. Four clubs have gone home within days, and although UEFA seems to have a policy in place for every possibility – including positive tests – it seems to be navigating the schedule without incident.
