The Champions League final tonight promises to be a top-level tactical showdown between the two new champions of English and French football. PSG is aiming to successfully defend the European crown. Meanwhile, Arsenal is on the threshold to win their first title in the most prestigious arena of the old continent.
Luis Enrique's PSG is a team that is almost in perfect condition before the final, especially after the semi-final match with Bayern Munich. Up to this point, PSG has scored 44 goals in the Champions League campaign, with an average efficiency of 2.8 goals/match, only less than Bayern Munich. As many as 13 PSG players have scored, showing the versatility of the scoring nose in Luis Enrique's squad.
The attacking trio Kvicha Kvaratskhelia - Ousmane Dembele - Desire Doue can make any defense falter, but there is still a challenge they have not faced, which is Arsenal's defense system. The Gunners have the lowest conceding rate in the top 5 European national championships (0.71 goals conceded/90 minutes). In the continental cup arena, this rate is even lower at 0.43. The English team kept a clean sheet in 9/14 matches from the beginning of the campaign to the final.
Although still possessing many players with good attacking ability such as Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard,... but the "Gunners" attack still cannot compare in terms of efficiency with PSG. Arsenal has the lowest scoring rate per game among the 5 defending champions in the top 5 European leagues (1.9 goals/match). Going to the Champions League, this number slightly increased to 2.1 goals/match.
The question now is whether sublime attack or tight defense will be a condition to win the Champions League title? Since the 1992-1993 season when the C1 Cup changed to the Champions League, when a list of 10 teams reached the final and had the most powerful attack each season, 9 of those teams have won the championship. Bayern Munich in the championship season with a perfect record in 2020 has the highest average goal score of 3.9 goals/game. That year, Bayern also conceded the least goals with an average of 0.73 goals/game. Therefore, their goal difference is about 3.2 goals/game, the highest in the past 34 Champions League seasons.
Liverpool in the 2017-2018 season was the only team with a strong attack to enter the Top 10 but did not win the championship. That year, The Kop's average goal per game was 3.2 but they lost to Real Madrid in the final. At that time, the average goal score of Los Blancos was 2.5 goals/game. The following season, Liverpool won the championship but the average goal score per game was much lower, only reaching 1.8.
The 10 teams that reached the final received the lowest number of goals conceded in the past 34 seasons of the Champions League, with 6 teams crowned. Among the 4 teams in this group that did not win, there was Arsenal of the 2005-2006 season when they lost to Barcelona in the final.
AC Milan of 1994 was an exception in the final. That year, they won the championship when they beat Barcelona 4-0 in the final match. However, looking at the previous journey, it can be seen how well Rossoneri defended. 3/6 matches in the group stage they ended in a 0-0 draw. That year Milan had an average conceded goal ratio of only 0.25 per match and that was also the best defensive record to date in Champions League history.
This season, in the Champions League, Arsenal has an average goal conceded per match of only 0.43. This helps them enter the group of 10 teams playing in the final with the best defense. Combined with an average goal score of 2.1 goals/match, they are the team with the 9th best goal score among 68 teams entering the final in the past 34 seasons. As for PSG, they ranked 19th.
PSG is very strong in attack, but the first leg semi-final match with Bayern Munich also exposed some weaknesses in defense. However, PSG is still confident in attack because that is Enrique's philosophy of victory. Remember in the previous season, Inter only conceded 1 goal in all 8 matches in the qualifying round. However, they lost 0-5 to PSG in the final.
Therefore, tonight's final will be very unpredictable. PSG's storming attacking power and Arsenal's solid defensive wall both have advantages, mixed with disadvantages. Just one moment of mistake or incident, any calculation can become meaningless.
