Ferran Torres needed 26 minutes for his hat-trick, and PSG have finally won a game
PSG had gone four matches without a win and sat 13th in Ligue 1. Their Champions League defence opened with 35 shots, six goals and a hat-trick from the man who won Spain the World Cup.
Sep 10, 2026
Paris Saint-Germain had not won a football match since 12 August, when Desire Doue’s goal beat Aston Villa to the Super Cup in Salzburg. They lost the Trophee des Champions to Lens, came back from two goals down at both Rennes and Lille to draw, and lost at home to Monaco on 4 September. Three games into Ligue 1 they had two points and sat 13th. Then the European champions turned up for the first night of their title defence and put 35 shots on Slovan Bratislava.
PSG won 6-1 at the Parc des Princes on Wednesday. Ousmane Dembele scored twice inside 23 minutes, Ferran Torres scored three times between the 31st and the 57th, and Fabian Ruiz added a sixth in the 88th. Suleiman Camara got one back for Slovan at 5-0.
Torres has had a strange and enormous three months
In extra time of the World Cup final, Pedro Porro crossed, Nico Williams headed the ball on, and Ferran Torres put it away in the 106th minute to beat Argentina 1-0 and make Spain world champions for the second time. That was 19 July. Before the transfer window shut he had left Barcelona for PSG in a 50 million euro deal, signed for five years and taken the number nine shirt.
His first Champions League appearance in that shirt produced a hat-trick, which no PSG player had ever managed on a Champions League debut for the club. The second goal came two minutes after the interval, finished after Maghnes Akliouche cut the ball back to him. The third was a close-range turn from a Dembele corner in a crowded box. Twenty-six minutes covered all three.
Barcelona sold him because the accounting made sense. On this evidence the football side of the ledger is going to take longer to settle.
The other man making history on Wednesday
In the away dugout stood Yaya Toure, who took the Slovan Bratislava job in June and by the end of August had done something no African coach had done before. Slovan beat NK Celje 2-1 after extra time on 26 August to go through 3-2 on aggregate, and Toure became the first African manager to lead a team into the Champions League proper.
His first match in the competition was away to the holders, which is roughly the worst draw available. It finished 6-1 and Slovan had a goal to show for it, Camara scoring in the 59th minute when the game was long gone. The result will be forgotten. The fact that an Ivorian coach walked out at the Parc des Princes for a Champions League tie, and that it took until 2026 for that to happen at all, is the part worth keeping.
Thirty-five shots
PSG had 72 per cent of the ball and took 35 shots, 14 of them on target. That is the most they have attempted in a Champions League match since Opta started recording the competition in 2003-04. Six went in. On the same numbers in Ligue 1 over the past month they have been drawing games from two goals up.
That gap is the interesting thing about PSG right now. In France they have looked slow to start and unable to close matches out, and Monaco have now beaten them three times in a row. In Europe, where they are chasing a third consecutive title, they scored six against opponents who were never going to live with them. One of those tells you more than the other, and it is not the one that finished 6-1.
The league phase runs on, and PSG’s next European test will be a better guide than this one. What they got on Wednesday was a win, a hat-trick from a 50 million euro signing, and a night off from being asked what is wrong.