PSG v Inter Milan LIVE: Team news and line-ups ahead Champions League final tonight – UK Times

Mikel Arteta will certainly believe so!

Despite crashing out to finallists PSG in the previous round, the Arsenal boss is convinced that his side was a level above the competition.

“I don’t think there’s been a better team [than Arsenal] in the competition from what I have seen, but we are out,” Arteta told TNT Sports after the semi-final defeat in Paris.

He later reiterated his claim, saying: “100 percent. Watching it back, watching the stats. It’s very clear but its not about the winning probability, it’s about making it count.”

Was this pride, arrogance or just plain delusion? Miguel Delaney had his say:

Not everyone in Paris will be watching tonight’s final…

Tonight’s result could have major ramifications on who takes home the Ballon d’Or in September.

The Independent has already narrowed the chasing pack down five top contenders:

1. Mohamed Salah
2. Ousmane Dembele
3. Lamine Yamal
4. Raphinha
5. Lautaro Martinez

Here’s a deeper look at those frontrunners:

Luis Enrique has called on his Paris St Germain players to seize their chance to “write themselves into the club’s history” by winning the Champions League.

Enrique told the club’s official website: “We all want to make history and to win Paris St Germain’s first-ever Champions League.

“Winning a trophy for the first time is always the hardest, but that’s what motivates me. There are only two teams and one game left, and I think that we can be proud of what we’ve accomplished, but we need to finish the job because our aim is to go down in history.

“Our team deserves to experience this final. I have no doubts about the fact that Paris St Germain’s fans and the club itself deserve to win this trophy.

“I don’t know if it’ll happen on May 31, a year later or two, three or four years later, but I hope that we’ll be the first ones to write that history because that’s what’s motivated us since we first set foot in Paris.”

Arsenal could have found themselves in a European final this evening if they cleared just one more hurdle of beating PSG. They didn’t.

Adam Clery delves into why and how Mikel Arteta’s should have overcame the Parisian giants:

“Winning the Champions League probably gets you upwards of £100m,” football finance expert Rob Wilson told Plejmo. “That obviously is made up of the prize money that you’ve generated thus far, and it also gets you around £15m for the final itself and a share of the performance bonuses related to it.

“There’s also money from the UEFA market pool that is probably another £15million to £20million, but that varies due to domestic broadcast deals.

“We know that France and Italy are much smaller in terms of their domestic broadcast deal than the Premier League. Matchday gate receipts about 10million, sponsorship activation around about £20million.”

As Paris Saint-Germain prepare to face Inter Milan in the Champions League final, Miguel Delaney examines how the French club’s president Nasser Al-Khelaifi, who pioneered the sport padel, stepped up after the fallout of the Super League:

Without cancer, Francesco Acerbi once said, he would have retired years ago. Perhaps when he was 28, which would have meant his career ended in 2016. Instead, here he is in 2025, preparing for his second Champions League final, maybe forever going to be the last footballer born in the 1980s to play in one.

Or one of the last, anyway, given that his Inter Milan teammates Yann Sommer, Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Marko Arnautovic were also born when the Berlin Wall was still intact and Matteo Darmian before the 1990s arrived.

Richard Jolly delves into the Inter mainstays who could be the last of a generation to play at this level:

For a man out of time, it might again be the right time. Gianluigi Donnarumma has felt football’s youngest anachronism, the type of player who had fallen out of fashion.

Now he stands 90 minutes – or, given, his skill set, perhaps 120 and a penalty shootout – from a second achievement that would be out of keeping with the modern footballing world.

Miguel Delaney reflects on Donnarumma’s stunning European campaign: