PSG edge Bayern 5-4 in record Champions League thriller
PSG’s 5-4 win over Bayern produced nine goals, the most in Champions League semi-final history, and turned a heavyweight tie into a chaos-fuelled spectacle.
Paris St-Germain and Bayern Munich delivered the kind of semi-final that cuts through the modern game’s habits of caution and control. PSG won 5-4 at the Parc des Princes, a first-leg result so open that it produced nine goals, the most ever in Champions League semi-final history, and left next Wednesday’s return in Munich finely balanced after an hour of seeming certainty and a frantic late collapse.
The scoring began with Harry Kane’s 17th-minute penalty for Bayern, but PSG answered through Khvicha Kvaratskhelia in the 24th minute and João Neves in the 33rd before Michael Olise levelled for the visitors in the 41st. Ousmane Dembélé’s penalty in first-half stoppage time sent PSG in 3-2 up, and Kvaratskhelia struck again in the 56th minute before Dembélé added a fifth two minutes later. Bayern still found a way back into it through Dayot Upamecano in the 65th minute and Luis Díaz in the 68th, but the comeback stopped there. It was the first time in a European semi-final that both teams scored four or more goals, and the five goals before the break were the most ever in a Champions League semi-final or final.
The scale mattered because this was not a novelty act between mismatched sides. PSG entered as defending champions, Bayern as six-time European champions, and UEFA said both clubs had arrived with 38 Champions League goals this season, more than any others. ESPN said both sides then moved beyond 40 goals in the competition, a first in Champions League history. PSG’s numbers were especially striking: they scored with all five of their shots on target, a ruthless return that matched the energy of a game played at full speed from the first penalty to the final Bayern surge.
The result also bent the recent history of the matchup. Bayern had beaten PSG 2-1 in Paris earlier in the competition, extending a run of five straight wins over the French club, while UEFA noted seven wins in the previous eight meetings, including the 2020 final in Lisbon. Yet PSG have now reached a third successive Champions League semi-final, the first time a French club has managed that, after sweeping Liverpool aside 2-0 in both legs in the quarter-finals. Bayern reached the last four by beating Atalanta and Real Madrid, but for one night at least, the tie felt less like a system test than a release valve: fast, unstable and impossible to script.
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