Let's Preview The Champions League Final

The European soccer season comes to an end with PSG vs. Inter.

A cliché you've heard thousands of time by now is, "Styles make fights." That works boxing, but it doesn't always work in soccer. What most neutrals wanted for the Champions League Final was Barcelona and PSG, who play almost the same way and very well might have produced a game that could only be illustrated accurately by Ralph Steadman. Sometimes, when a game as big as a European Cup Final gets two teams that are diametrically opposed in tactics and methods, we all end up watching one team run into a wall for 70 minutes before just waiting around for penalties or a bolt from the blue, a la Rodri's goal in the 2023 Final that beat this Inter team. It's good for beer sales for the bar you're watching from, at least.

Thankfully, that wasn't the case when Inter deprived the competition of Barcelona in the semifinal. Though Inter are set out to defend-and-counter, those two legs still produced 13 goals. Inter's counter is vicious, but their defenders are still three days older than water and spring leaks rather consistently for a team this good. Notice them coughing up two leads to the equally Pearl Jam-listening Pedro of Lazio to lose Serie A.

We don't need a decoder ring to figure out how this one's going to go. PSG is going to have the ball for most of the match. They'll try and break down a bunkered-in Inter in their customary 3-5-2. Whenever PSG lose the ball, Denzel Dumphries and Federico DiMarco are going to fly up the flanks as if they got ghost pepper in their rectum to join Lautaro Martinez and Marcus Thuram in attack while Hakan Çalhanoğlu tries to thread through-balls to all four of them. It's easy to picture.

PSG aren't nearly as defensively ropey as Barcelona, nor do they set their defensive line so suicidally high that Dumphries can consistently, gleefully sprint right through it and into Yellowstone-sized gaps. They held both Liverpool and Arsenal to just one goal over two legs. But they're also the team that gave up four to Aston Villa. They were inches away from being taken to extra-time by Villa, or being booted altogether by Arsenal or Liverpool. They were fortunate in some wayward finishing or glorious saves from Donnarumma. Hey, no team gets this far without some luck and bounces going their way. It's par for the course. Real Madrid always get here only on luck and bounces, for fuck's sake.

The problem for PSG is that Inter don't really miss. They don't need a ton of chances to score a ton of goals, and they've piled up 14 goals in their last six games. That's even with trotting out a good portion of the B-team in Serie A lately to try and balance chasing both the Champions League and Serie A (they came up a point short for the latter). They created just about 3.0 xG against Barca over two legs, but scored seven times. Some of that is luck, but some of that is just being dead-eyed.

PSG, meanwhile, have had a tendency to get agoraphobic about the space between the posts at times. They could have put Arsenal away in the first leg, but didn't. They could have put Liverpool away in either leg of that tie, but didn't. This isn't a team that's loaded with guys who have consistently poured in goals at this level. This is Ousmane Dembele's first foray into being a premier scorer. Thuram and Martinez have been at this for a bit.

PSG's main strength is just how hard their midfield works and how much hell they create for the opposition. Vitinha, Fabian Ruiz, and João Neves are on everyone's ass the second PSG lose the ball, generally win it, and start yet another foray into the penalty box. There is barely any space to breathe, much less get one's head up to try and pick a pass out of the press.

Inter are somewhat press-proof, if only because they're not looking to do anything that intricate, especially against an opponent like PSG. They don't need a lot of time to launch long balls over the defense and into the space that Achraf Hakimi has abandoned for DiMarco to sprint onto. Pacho and Marquinhos can be bodied up by Martinez and Thuram. Inter are going to get looks.

Holding out PSG entirely, though...that's another matter. Inter's midfield is just so goddamn old, it's not hard to see them looking rickety and needing a seat on a park bench when PSG's midfield really starts to weave stuff together. Considering how much Dembele drops into midfield and the constant rotations the PSG triumvirate produce, it's hard to see Inter keeping up for 90 minutes.

Inter's habit of using a five-man defense nullifies some of the flexibility of PSG's frontline, and Kvaratskhelia's ability to beat a man means less when there's two defenders behind the fullback he just scorched instead of one. Didn't really stop Barca from pouring in the goals, though as good as PSG are they don't have a Lamine Yamal.

I've sort of been shocked that PSG haven't paid on set-pieces. Donnarumma decided to clear every cross against Liverpool. Arsenal's set-piece mastery disappeared long before the semifinal. Villa got to them a bit. Other than Donnarumma, who is Kyle Fletcher-like in being 7'-9", they're quite small. Inter have a lot of trees. Smelling a goal off a corner here.

Finals just aren't as open as anyone would like. The occasion is too big. There will be lots of PSG being stonewalled by Inter around Inter's box, and Inter might not be as hell-or-high-water on the counter, at least to start.

It feels like PSG's tendency to freeze in front of goal will be a bigger problem here than in two-legged rounds. Inter need less to go right to win, and were in this spot just two years ago. There are contrasts all over the field, both in tactics and PSG being the hot young thing and Inter being salt-and-pepper in a lot of spots.

Styles make fights, and that will probably translate to Saturday afternoon, too.