PSG and Bayern, the two highest-scoring sides in Europe, meet at the Parc des Princes for the Champions League final's harder semi
PSG host Bayern Munich at the Parc des Princes on Tuesday night in the first leg of the Champions League semi-final, and the route here for both sides reads like a tournament that has run away from the favourites. Real Madrid out, Barcelona out, Liverpool out, Arsenal still alive but in the other half. The two sides with the most goals in the competition this season meet in Paris with a final in Budapest at the end of it.
Luis Enrique’s side are unbeaten in the knockout rounds and beat Liverpool 4-0 on aggregate in the quarter-final. Vincent Kompany’s Bayern came through the harder draw, knocking Real Madrid out 6-4 on aggregate after a second leg at the Allianz Arena that produced one of the best Champions League games of the season. PSG and Bayern come into this tie as the two highest-scoring sides left in the competition.
PSG, the holders, and a maturer side
This is the same PSG team that won the Champions League last season and the same one in name only. Kylian Mbappe is gone. Marquinhos and Hakimi are still here. Around them Luis Enrique has built a different kind of side, one that does not throw five players forward at the same time, that defends with eight, and that hits hard on the counter through Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Ousmane Dembele. Dembele’s brace in the second leg against Liverpool was the moment of the quarter-final. Kvaratskhelia, the January signing from Napoli, has been the connective player who turns those breaks into goals.
The number that really tells the story of this PSG side is more boring. Luis Enrique’s team have lost only a handful of matches all season and the Ligue 1 title is not yet clinched. The Coupe de France is in their hands. The only thing left that gives this season meaning beyond the domestic clean sweep is a second European title in a row, and they would do it under a format that has never seen a club retain the Champions League since the league phase came in last year.
Bayern, Kompany, and the Kane factor
Bayern have been the most in-form team in Europe since the turn of the year. Kompany, in his second season in charge, has done what Thomas Tuchel and the year before him could not, made Bayern look like Bayern again. Harry Kane has scored at the rate he set at Tottenham. Jamal Musiala is back from his broken leg. Michael Olise has been the breakout player of the campaign, with four Champions League goals and seven assists, and a directness from the right that no one in Europe is dealing with right now.
Bayern have also made a habit of winning these particular fixtures lately. Their 2-1 win at the Parc des Princes on Matchday 4 of the league phase, the Luis Diaz double in November, made it five wins from their last six competitive meetings with PSG — the only exception being PSG's 2-0 victory at the Club World Cup quarter-final in July 2025. The pattern of the recent meetings has not been about pressing PSG out of the game so much as soaking up their early surge and going through them in the second half.
First leg, second leg, and what the holders need
The semi-final is two-legged. The first leg in Paris on Tuesday, the second at the Allianz Arena on May 6. Bayern beat PSG 2-1 at the Parc des Princes in the league phase back in November, the only meeting between them this season before the semi-final draw, and the venue chosen for the first leg is, in pure recent-history terms, the one Bayern looked most comfortable at. The Parc is the smaller of the two grounds, and on the evidence of November, the holders cannot afford to give up anything cheap.
For neutrals it is the tie of the round. Two of the three best attacks in Europe, two coaches who have spent the season raising the level of the players around them, and a quirk of the draw that means the winner avoids both Arsenal and Atletico Madrid until the final in Budapest. PSG kick off as marginal favourites with the bookmakers. The history of this fixture says they should not be.
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