The record victory of Paris Saint Germain on Inter in the Champions League final of 31 May 2025 will remain impressed in the annals of football, and in the memory of fans of this game as beautiful as it is cruel, for various reasons. But in particular it leaves us two certainties, two lessons to reflect on.

The unprecedented defeat of Inter

It will remain memorable above all because, in fact, there had never been a waste of five goals in an international football final at high levels, both at the club level and counting European, World Cup and America Cups: there was a 5-1 of Tottenham on Atletico Madrid in the Cup Cup final of 1963, and the record of goals made in a final still belongs to Real Madrid (and who if not?) Fifth cup of champions in five editions by beating the Eintracht Frankfurt for 7-3.

The unprecedented victory of the PSG (without Mbappè)

And then this final will also be remembered because it is the first Champions League won by the PSG, who in the pre -Qotariati era had won a cup cup and participated in some finals, and which reaches this success after over two billion euros “invested” with a very rich current property; A victory that arrived when they stopped making strange maneuvers, on which UEFA has embarrassingly silent for years, to spend obscene and against any logic to buy flowers of champions or hold back what he wanted to go to win at Real and now he will be eating his hands because, for the rest, he remained dry -mouthed.

Also this time they won the owls, though …

Football, moreover, is full of stories like that of Mbappè, and is even more full of losers, rather than winners. Those “owls” who celebrated the triumph of the Parisians from this part of the Alps, the Milan players, who won seven cups of the champions but tried to make the names of Dudek, or Kluivert or Boly for the most experienced, and will still have the chills after years after years; The Juventusians, who still have the record of lost finals and know very well how the Inter players feel very well today; And to a lesser extent also the Neapolitans, who now enjoy the silence of those who tried to diminish their Scudetto but in the Champions League final we never got there.

In short, PSG-Inter 5-0 will remain impressed in everyone’s memory-Parisians, Interists, anti-interists, football enthusiasts in general-for a long time, and we can only imagine the catchphrases that the poor Inter players will have to suffer in the summer of 2025, between greetings with five fines and phrases in French included in the most varied speeches. Moreover, many Inter players have repeated for years the catchphrase “4-1 Asensio is over” to deride the Juventusians, and this time unlike two years ago they certainly cannot speak of defeat with a high head: football is also made of teasing, and provided they do not transcend into the insult is right.

But leaving records and teasing, there are two absolute certainties, or if you want two lessons, which leaves us inheritance from Paris on Inter: one have noticed everyone, the other decidedly less.

Luis Enrique’s lesson that consoles everyone

The unanimously recognized certainty is that if there is one who deserves this success is Luis Enrique. Who won his second triple as a coach after that in 2015 culminating against Juve. But in the meantime he has faced the most disgusting loss unjust that life can give to a parent, with the death for osteosarcoma of his daughter Xana, only nine years old, in 2019.

“In life we ​​are born, we die, the rest is faced,” said Luis Enrique yesterday, speaking of how the memory of Xana always feels within himself: on the shirt he had a comic that reproduced the celebrations of ten years ago in Berlin with her, and the fans of the PSG paid homage to him with a banner that reproduced the moment in which they planted the flag together, adapted by Barça to Paris, Tears of the Sky journalist Federica Masolin were, in our opinion, the best possible answer to those words that were a gigantic lesson of life and strength of mind.

We are all with Luis Enrique, in this victory, even Interists also console themselves by thinking about his history.

The lesson to Italian football: young people serve to win

And if this is sure, and everyone said it, there is another indisputable thing reaffirmed by the defeat of Inter. And let’s talk about Inter’s defeat because in this case the lesson is all for Italian football: if you want to win at high levels in current football you have to give space and trust to young people.

The Paris won with a team from the average age of 24 years, the best on the field was 2005 Douè, even the blue goalkeeper Gigio Donnarumma raises the average age, with his 1999 class, compared to the various douè, Nuno Mendes, Kvara, Vitinha and Pacho, all born from 2000 onwards.

As for Inter, among the owners the youngest was sticks, he too ’99, while in 2025 the only ones born after 2000 were the successful bissecks (for 8 ‘), Zaleski and Asslani.

And let’s be clear, all the Italian teams that have won the Champions League have always had mature teams, from Milan’s Milan to Zanes’s Inter passing through the Juve in Viali and various other Milan of Maldini. It is part of our way of doing football, where we give more importance to tactical diligence than to qualities as explosiveness and imagination. Just ask Roberto Baggio or, to pull him a little up, to Beppe Bergomi himself, who to get convened by Bearzot in 1982 at 18 years of age had to grow some mustache that earned him his uncle’s nickname.

But if for years now all players and coaches have complained about too many dense calendars, and football leaders respond by demonstrating extreme understanding with the expansion of the cups and the invention of new competitions, as is it that in Italian football we still prefer to buy mature players and, despite many words, leave the young people on the bench until at least 23-24 years before giving them the space they deserve?

Will it be only to face more and longer seasons of a faster and faster football can young people give something more in terms of freshness, as well as creativity and unpredictability?

They are obviously rhetorical questions, because in theory we all agree that giving space to young champions has many advantages to balance the disadvantage of the inexperience (as in every job, how do you become expert if nobody makes us start?).

Yet after another demonstration, after another victory of a team wedge of young talents, we are still here, to comment on the terrible defeat of the best team expressed by a football in which those born in 2000 are still a little young to start owners.