Rarely in recent years has a Champions League final offered such clear dividing lines between the superpowers of its two contenders. In the red corner, an Arsenal side who have proven themselves to be the outstanding defensive outfit of a generation. In the blue, the holders Paris Saint-Germain, whose outlasting of Bayern Munich in the first leg of the semifinal probably means they can lay claim to being the best attack in the game.Painting in such broad brush strokes naturally misses some of the details — we’ll get onto a few of them later. After all PSG shut Bayern out for 93 minutes of the second leg. Mikel Arteta’s squad is stacked with the sort of players he has come to believe win football matches, those capable of breaking a game open with a moment of individual brilliance.Perhaps it was exposure to PSG that reaffirmed those beliefs. In the first leg of the Champions League semifinal last season it was Ousmane Dembele who took the tie away from Arsenal. In the second, it was Gianluigi Donnarumma who locked them out. It is an open secret that the Gunners want payback for last season, a tie where they felt they gave a far better account of themselves than the scoreline suggested. How to watch Arsenal vs. PSG, oddsDate: Saturday, May 30 | Time: 12 p.m. ETLocation: Puskas Arena — Budapest, HungaryTV: CBS | Live stream: Paramount+
If Arsenal get that, they will at last be champions of Europe, the biggest club never to have done it. Fail and we might just be looking at a Champions League power the likes of which this competition has fleetingly seen in recent decades.
1. Are PSG on the cusp of a dynasty?
Since the European Cup became the Champions League in the 1992-93 season, there is only one club who have retained the trophy, the Real Madrid of 2016, 2017 and 2018. That was a team who wrote themselves into the history of great European dynasties — their forbearers of the 1950s, Ajax and Bayern Munich in the 1970s, AC Milan in the 1980s and 1990s — despite only ever seeming to be the best club on the continent just before the final whistle in late May. PSG would not be that sort of winner. Admittedly, they were not playing their best stuff in the winter of 2025, but that aside, they have made as compelling a case as anyone to being the best team in the sport for quite some time now.
There is no reason to think that would not continue. Of their strongest XI, only Marquinhos and Fabian Ruiz are 30 or over. Plenty of their best and brightest — Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Joao Neves, Willian Pacho — might be a little way away from their prime years. If Luis Enrique is true to his word about retiring at 60 then he has four years in him. Given his success at ushering in the post-Kylian Mbappe years, there is no reason to believe that his remaining time at PSG would see a slacking off of standards. There are more stars and big earners in this lineup than are probably credited, but unlike those many years of Champions League failures, the most important voice in the dressing room is the manager’s.
That is why PSG look like a team that could last for years. It is as much the system as the star that is the winning factor. That is how they have weathered selection issues, partly a function of the injuries they did not get in 2024-25 and partly Luis Enrique’s commitment to rotating his squad. That their identity goes beyond “oh I do hope Mbappe/Neymar/Lionel Messi fancy winning us this week’s big game” explains why they haven’t been plagued by the drop-offs in performance that afflicted past iterations.
They are also the first PSG team to seem to have found the right balance in domestic competitions. It is worth noting at this juncture that if we are in the midst of a Parisian dynasty, this might be the first team to dominate Europe while finding their domestic league so straightforward. Even those aforementioned Madrid, Bayern and Ajax teams were not topping the table at home year in, year out. Lens put up a bit of a fight this season but still ended up six points off the pace.
The critique often aimed at PSG was that Ligue 1 was not competitive enough to produce a Champions League winner. It is hard to see a case for that having changed. What has is how its holders approach it. In 2021-22 Messi played 2152 league minutes, Mbappe 3029. Neymar, not known for his consistent availability, hit 1861, the most he registered in any season in the French capital.
CBS Sports
In 2025-26 Luis Enrique used the following key players for fewer minutes than Neymar: Willian Pacho, Bradley Barcola, Khvicha Kvarastkhelia, Achraf Hakimi, Desire Doue, Joao Neves, Nuno Mendes, Fabian Ruiz, Ousmane Dembele, Marquinhos. The remaining starters from last season’s Champions League final averaged 1402 league minutes this season, a little over 15 and a half full games. Now, plenty of those players would have more miles in the tank if it weren’t for injuries and the heavy toll of last season, but their manager has rotated too, far more than almost any of his counterparts, maybe even Vincent Kompany, might be able to. There’s no evidence that PSG stars slack off in their domestic games like their predecessors might have. They just don’t have to pull as many shifts at the coal face.
From a distance, it looks like Ligue 1 serves as an opportunity for PSG players to keep themselves fresh and sharp. No wonder they have hit such heights in the Champions League run in. So long as they have a coach who will demand such excellence of them when they do come off the pitch and a league environment where rotation is so feasible, this could be a dynasty that runs and runs.
2. Who leads the Arsenal line?
By the time you get to late May, most selection dilemmas that face a manager are really just a matter of form and fitness. The curveballs that do come their opponent’s way tend to be a function more of what is wrong with a team than anything that has been set up. Think Myles Lewis-Skelly quite possibly locking himself into a starting berth in Budapest off the back of a resurgence that began against a banged-up Fulham. If Martin Zubimendi had been in his early form, Arsenal’s No.49 would barely have gotten a look.
There is one spot in Arteta’s XI, though that might still be up for grabs in the final hours and that is the center forward. The signs of the run-in are that it will probably be Kai Havertz who leads the line at the Ferenc Puskas Arena, the big-game forward who knows what it takes to win the biggest games. A month ago it seemed a lock that the German would start any Champions League final, but Viktor Gyokeres saw the decision to start Havertz against Manchester City at the Etihad and, it would appear, he took that personally.
Arsenal still facing pressure ahead of UCL final, but Gunners embrace challenge and chance at history
James Benge
The three goals and an assist since then only tell part of the story. The quality of Gyokeres’ touch seems to have skyrocketed overnight; he is linking play in the way Arteta loves his center forwards to do and is bullying center backs he might have bounced off in his struggles. Given that the sample size is still quite small, there might be some more straightforward explanation for this — bad opposition, good form, lucky breaks — but Gyokeres has at least ensured there is a conversation to be had.
It is an intriguing one, partly because of the differences in how they interpret the role, which are well reflected in Gradient Sport’s physical metrics. In his 14 games this season — some of which have come in a midfielder role — Havertz covers more ground than everyone in the Arsenal squad except Martin Odegaard and Mikel Merino. He puts in a shift across every millimeter of the 10.16 kilometres he averages per match.
Gyokeres is hardly chilling out and watching from afar either, but the 9.56 km he covers is a little more in line with your average center forward. He lurks, waiting to explode into the game. Only Gabriel Martinelli averages more sprint distance than Gyokeres’ 360 metres per 90 minutes and it is only the Brazilian who is meaningfully quicker. Gyokeres is explosiveness, Havertz is hard yards. Which does Arteta need against PSG?
Probably the latter and it is probably also true that in Havertz, he gets a better presser too. Do not overestimate the difference there, though. According to Gradient, Gyokeres ranks 10th in the league for pressures in the attacking third per 90, a leading mark for Arsenal, too. It can occasionally feel like the Swede is running rather than hunting, but it is worth noting that in this season’s Premier League, Gyokeres wins possession in the attacking third on 0.81 occasions per 90 minutes. Across his three years at Arsenal, in the minutes where he plays as a center forward, Havertz averages 0.58.
There will probably be a lot of work to be done without the ball for Arsenal, whose best chance of silence Kvaratskhelia and Dembele comes from jamming up their supply. Maybe Havertz’s experience with press leader Odegaard means he edges it in terms of out-of-possession quality. When it comes to physical profiles, might Gyokeres be better suited to exploiting his pace against tiring legs? As for in possession, well, it is there the answer becomes rather clear, as the graphic below might suggest.
CBS Sports
Havertz has Gyokeres beaten when it comes to creating for others, moving the ball upfield and combining with his teammates. Then again, Gyokeres’ task is to put the ball in the net, right? And he has done that more than any Arsenal player this season, 21 times in all competitions. Contrast that with some of Havertz’s high-profile misses leading the line, including what felt like it was going to be the earth-shattering header he put over against Manchester City.
Then again, Havertz gets in position to miss those shots. That is why he averages more xG and shots per 90 and, as the soon-to-be-redeemed lothario in an outdated rom com might say, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. In that City defeat, Havertz took five shots, scoring one. In eight games and 464 minutes against the rest of the Premier League’s top five, Gyokeres took four shots. The evidence of this season is that he struggles against the highest echelon of opponents. The evidence of recent weeks at least hints that that might change, but it is probably only enough to mean that this is a question worth asking. The answer, however, is quite clear.
3. Which team needs it right back most?
At the time of writing it is not yet certain that either Arsenal or PSG will have to do without their first-choice right back. Reports in France suggested that Achraf Hakimi missed an internal friendly earlier this week, and it is late April since the Morocco international last took to the field in the first leg of the Champions League semifinal. Jurrien Timber’s absence has been even longer, dating back to a complicated groin issue that first reared its head in the win over Everton on March 14. Since then, the Gunners have lost Ben White to a season-ending knee injury.
The good news for Arsenal is that sources say Timber did return to training on Wednesday and was on Thursday due to be part of the squad that flew out to Hungary. With the alternative likely to be pushing Cristhian Mosquera out to right back, any minutes Arteta can get from Timber would surely feel sweeter than those Hakimi might offer Luis Enrique.
After all, Warren Zaire-Emery has proven himself to be a pretty solid option at right back this season. He may not have the overlapping threat and goal threat of Hakimi — who has 12 goals, 13 assists and an average of over 1.5 shots per 90 from right back since the start of 2024-25 — but compared to almost any other fullback, 6.2 progressive passes and 9.4 progressive carries are great numbers. He is also a solid defender who will be coming up against a flank that is Arsenal’s relative weakness. Arteta has varied weapons to throw at the PSG, right from the in-form Leandro Trossard to the pure burst of Martinelli, all potentially supplemented by the wonderfully unpredictable Riccardo Calafiori, but the biggest threat the Gunners can pose comes with a full-strength right flank.
Gradient Sports
That is where the headaches might lie for Arsenal. They need someone who can run with Kvaratskhelia, and although a fully fit Timber struggled to do that early in the first leg of last season’s semifinal, he had his moments when he started to figure out arguably the most dangerous attacker on the planet. Should he win his fitness battle, he will doubtless be motivated to reassert himself in a rerun. “I think we believed in ourselves already a lot,” mentioned Timber of this season’s success. “Obviously, we’ve been there for a couple of years now, competing on the highest level with the best teams. Last year we reached the semifinal. I think this year we went up to a new level. We won the Premier League and we are in the Champions League final. I think that says enough. The belief in the squad is there. The enjoyment is there. Obviously, you have to take this feeling into next week and hopefully it will be amazing.”
Equally important is how Timber, the attacker, might disrupt Paris Saint-Germain. Though the Dutch international is not as at ease in the final third as White, Arsenal have not been afraid to platform him and this season he averages nearly three open play penalty box touches per 90, more than Eberechi Eze, Martin Odegaard or indeed any of Arteta’s other fullbacks.
The last English team to really assert their will on PSG was Chelsea in last summer’s Club World Cup, where Malo Guston pushed high and wide to give Cole Palmer an attacking lane inside. If Timber were fit enough to do so, it is easy to imagine Arteta doing an inverted version of that, the right back dovetailing with Martin Odegaard in central areas so that they can manufacture isolation looks for Bukayo Saka. They might try the same thing with Mosquera, who was remarkably front-footed when he came on for White away to Atletico Madrid. It was admirable but a little uneasy on the eye. That, you suspect, is what you would get from Mosquera going forwards and backwards. He’d give it a good go, but he couldn’t find Saka with progressive passes as easily as the man he’s replacing does and might find himself given some cruel lessons in full back play by Kvaratskhelia. How, then, Arsenal could do with whatever minutes Timber can give them.
