LISBON (Reuters) – After four exciting quarter-finals, the upheavals have stopped in the last four stages of the Champions League, for Sunday’s final between Bayern Munich and Paris St Germain.
Five-time winner Bayern are back in the top flight for the first time since 2013 after finishing a four-match winning streak in the semi-finals with Wednesday’s 3-0 win over Olympique Lyonnais.
PSG is in the big game for the first time, having struggled to translate their dominance of the French league into a real challenge in Europe until the victories here against Italian Atalanta and RB Leipzig take their place.
For the first time since 1998, the Champions League final will feature two groups that have entered the festival as national champions, a return to the day of the old European Cup where the winners of a country’s name were allowed to participate.
While there will be no enthusiasts to see the crash at the Estadio da Luz, home of The Portuguese club Benfica, millions of people from all over the world will see the match, which is the most watched annual sporting event in the world.
And there is a lot of interest in those who are outdoors in Germany and France.
The PSG attack is led by Brazilian star Neymar, exciting French World Cup winner Kylian Mbappé and cunning Argentine winger Angel Di Maria.
It will be desirable to see if the French aspect can spread Bayern’s maximum defensive line, which has been crossed several times by a devastated Lyon.
“Paris is a wonderful team,” Bayern coach Hansi Flick said. “Let’s look at some things, we know they have fast players. We will try to organize our defense, but we know that our greatest strength is to put pressure on our conflicting parties.”
Bayern’s most sensible goalscorer is Polish striker Robert Lewandowski, who leads the tournament standings with 15 goals this season and has discovered the goal 55 times in all competitions.
The club’s left-back, Alphonso Davies, 19, is the most exciting young player of the tournament and was born in a refugee camp in Ghana before moving to Canada, which represents national teams.
Tactically, the latter faces two opposing German coaches to another just for a moment in the tournament’s history.
Thomas Tuchel of PSG, former coach of Borussia Dortmund, controlled to give the team of the French champion, very assembled, the balance and metal that he lacked in years.
Flick took over as Bayern manager until November, but had an astonishing impact. Since mid-December, Bayern have achieved 28 wins and a solo draw, scoring 97 goals and awarding only 22.
Bayern, who beat Barcelona 8-2 in the quarter-finals, have experience.
The Bavarians have already played the European Cup or Champions League top ten times, winning their fifth name in 2013.
The PSG has reached the quarter-finals only once before and its functionality in Europe came here in the last Cup Winners’ Cup, which it won in 1996.
Reporting through Simon Evans; Edited by Christian Radnedge
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