Has there ever been a game of football quite like this? On a luminous, thrilling, slightly crazed night at the Parc des Princes, Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich produced something that felt like a different category of human activity altogether.
There were nine goals in Paris, the most ever in a Champions League semi-final first leg. The end result was a largely arbitrary 5-4 lead for PSG ahead of next week’s return. Most remarkable was the nature of the spectacle itself, which felt like football of the demi-gods, a startling combination of unceasing fine point craft, and constant attacking thrust.
We came expecting another densely packed semi-final in the most pressurised club football competition ever devised: fine margins in between the crush and press. What we got was something closer to a piece of art, 90 minutes of high end full-contact collective improvisation.
By rights a 5-4 should be a little messy and bloody. This was crisp, clean and almost orderly in its to-and-fro, crammed with constantly evolving cameos; from the feather-light brilliance of Michael Olise, the most dramatically improved player in Europe, a man on a rocket-thrust to the outer atmosphere, to the deep-jazz improvisations of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.
