Can you really have much European Cup heritage when your club is only 54 years young, has spent only 40 of those years playing at this rarefied level, and just 12 of them at these late, defining stages of the competition?
Well, yes you can, if you’re Paris Saint-Germain: you can have a heritage of failing and falling short, of calamity and collapse, of wasting talent and resources at an unprecedented scale.
In recent years, such a commanding first-half performance — soaring into a 2-0 lead inside 20 minutes — might still have set us up for another night of schadenfreude across much of the rest of Europe.
But as everyone has been at pains to point out on the road to Munich and throughout PSG’s run to this final, those Benzema hat-tricks at the Bernabeu, late Rashford penalties and ‘remontadas’ now feel a thing of the past.
The Athletic’s writers broke down the key moments from the final here.
