PSG will edge Arsenal in a Champions League classic – with one key caveat |
PSG will edge Arsenal in a Champions League classic – with one key caveat
May 30, 2026 — 5:00am
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Are London’s streets about to host another party, or will the defending champions cement European greatness? So much is riding on this Champions League final for both Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain. So much ambition can be realised and lost in a single game in Budapest in the early hours on Sunday.
Mikel Arteta, having just secured Arsenal’s first English Premier League title since in 2004, now has the chance to achieve what even Arsene Wenger’s Invincibles could not. To mend the little piece of Gunners hearts still broken by the 2006 near-miss: that 2-1 loss to Barcelona at the Stade de France. Twenty years on, a first taste of Europe’s premier prize is within reach once more. All that stands in the way is the continent’s most unstoppable team.
And PSG will want this badly, too. To retain the trophy would be to join Zinedine Zidane’s Real Madrid as only the second club to go back to back in the Champions League era. Even before 1992, such a feat was rare. The elite European Cup group is Real Madrid in the 1950s, Benfica and Inter Milan in the ’60s, Kevin Keegan’s Liverpool, Johan Cruyff’s Ajax, Franz Beckenbauer’s Bayern........