Brilliant PSG pave way for new era of dominance in Champions League | OneFootball

Luis Enrique’s talented young side set up for sustained period of success after Inter Milan thrashing sends ominous warning to rivals

Luis Enrique’s message was one to make you sit up and take notice. Paris Saint-Germain’s extraordinary victory in the Champions League final barely an hour old, Enrique looked instead to the future and promised: “We are going to continue to conquer the footballing world.”

The French side produced one of the great Champions League final performances, perhaps the greatest. Certainly by margin of victory it was the best. A 5-0 scoreline was unprecedented and did not flatter PSG, whose superior fitness and attacking firepower made Inter Milan look the ageing team they have done so well to mask en route to the final.

“Technically, they were stronger than us”, Inter manager Simone Inzaghi admitted afterwards. At the level they hit in Munich, they would surely have been too strong for anyone on the continent. Not only deserving champions, Enrique’s PSG threaten to dominate European football for the next five years or more.

PSG threaten to dominate European football for the next five years or more

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Next season, England become the first country ever to be represented by six teams in a single edition of the Champions League. Whichever of them have to come face-to-face with this young and hungry side will not be envied.

Liverpool and Arsenal, first and second in the Premier League this season, were both sent packing in Europe this term by Ousmane Dembele, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Co.

First, though, PSG head to the United States for the Club World Cup, which kicks off in less than a fortnight.

As only the third European club to win a Treble since Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United in 1999, it is surely they, rather than Real Madrid or Bayern Munich, who are favourites to lift that trophy at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 13.

Following the Club World Cup, the longer of the two summer transfer window opens, offering PSG the chance to review and renew, potentially adding yet more layers before preparing for another season of domestic and continental dominance.

Since gaining immense riches following its June 2011 purchase by Qatar Sports Investments, pursuing the Champions League trophy has been the club’s raison d’etre and its great fixation. For the first time since the European Cup was first conceived in Paris all of 70 years ago, the trophy returned to the French capital.

It felt not like the endgame but, rather, the crowning of a new era.

Luis Enrique led PSG to their first Champions League trophy

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PSG had to work through the signing, failing and selling of superstars such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Neymar, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe in order to finally become a team with enough quality but also, crucially, enough balance to finally taste European success.

Enrique has masterminded that on-field harmony, of course, but a great deal of the credit must go to his key players, who stepped up when it matters this season and struck fear into the other European giants on Saturday, on a night that was ominous for every team that has designs on challenging for the Champions League over the next few years.

Desire Doue, only 19, scored twice, assisted another and was outstanding throughout, while Vitinha, 25, pulled the strings in midfield all night. Substitute Bradley Barcola, 22, wreaked havoc when he came on, as did 19-year-old Senny Mayulu.

PSG chairman, Nasser Al- Khelaifi, has said the dream is for PSG to one day be able to win the Champions League with 11 Parisian players in the starting line-up. Their new training centre, recently opened in the city’s north-west region of Poissy, is expected to help them on that journey, hoovering up more of the city’s talent at an earlier age and ensuring the club’s transfer strategy is supplemented by a prolific youth system too.

Already, it is. PSG’s fifth and final goal against Inter was scored by Mayulu, the teenage academy graduate born eight miles from the centre of Paris and at the club since Under-13s.

Fewer and fewer of those stories occur at big-spending Premier League clubs these days. If cash-rich PSG can invest great sums of money each transfer window but also produce their own talent - and often - then there could be no stopping them.

A win that seemed the culmination of a 14-year obsession may actually be just the start of a dynasty.