The dark truth, and light, from Saturday’s Champions League final 

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Inside Sport Newsletter. 

The street cleaners around Islington got to work early on Monday morning, although without a great sense of urgency. It is, after all, going to take a long, long time to clear the debris of broken bottles, crumpled cans and discarded plastic bags left behind by the jubilation of Arsenal’s Premier League trophy parade – and many more hands than the solo sweeper stoically making his way along Holloway Road.

As an estimated crowd of over one million people lined the streets around the Emirates, you had to remind yourself that Arsenal had actually lost Saturday’s Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain on penalties. Any sense of despondency was swept away as soon as Mikel Arteta and Martin Odegaard stepped onto the top deck of one of the four open-top buses and lifted the Premier League trophy to the cheers of the crowds below. A first league title in 22 years felt like enough.

And so Sunday, with its sea of red mist, became one of the great days for this corner of the capital – the sort of occasion that reinforces just how far football’s reach extends and its power to unite. In a way, it felt as though there is such an appetite for moments like these – multicultural celebrations that serve as an antidote to the direction the world can sometimes seem to be heading. In increasingly divided and isolating times, this was a celebration of community.

That was my takeaway from the weekend, anyway. Others are available, including Richard Jolly on how Arsenal’s endless attrition cost them the Champions League final and Miguel Delaney on the changes Arteta has to make to take the next step. Then there’s the bigger-picture stuff, which Miguel also tackles as he looks at the newly crowned double and Champions League winners PSG and the influence of state money. That’s the darker side of the game, after Arsenal’s homecoming brought some light.

Thousands of Arsenal fans lined the streets of north London as the club celebrated their Premier League title triumph with a trophy parade near the Emirates Stadium

Paris Saint-Germain are only the second European team to complete the 'double-double' of winning the European Cup/Champions League and their domestic league title in the same season, two years in a row. Who are the other two? 

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THE DISPATCH

The dark truth behind PSG’s Champions League dominance

Just four years on from a World Cup where they took centre stage, Qatar’s sportswashing and myriad other issues have been largely forgotten, writes Miguel Delaney, even amid PSG’s European football takeover

Qatar again has the European Cup. It’s a simple assertion of reality, that warrants a lot of repetition and reflection, due its mind-bending layers.

You only have to consider one huge shift in four years. This week is now finally the point where football moves from the intensive ubiquity of the club game to the unique build-up to the World Cup. That means there’s an extra timeliness to the Champions League final being unusually close to the tournament’s start, given what happened in it.

Four years ago, there was a wall of justified fury over every issue to do with Qatar: sportswashing, a “slave labour” system based on racial discrimination, wider suppression of human rights and specific human stories like the imprisonment of whistleblower Abdullah Ibhais. And now, as their European club team retains the Champions League… there’s virtually none of that.

There’s effusive praise for Paris Saint-Germain, as well as celebration, glory and endearing little details like the sunglasses that the brilliant Khvicha Kvaratskhelia was wearing.

There is also of course an appropriate metaphor within that reflection on those shades.

Any discussion on the “morality” of anything to do with the final has only revolved Arsenal’s football. There was even the convenient leak of a Sir Alex Ferguson message to PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi about how the team who tried to play football won.

All of this carries an extra resonance given what PSG have achieved, and what being the European champions is intended to represent.

Retaining the trophy has long been seen as the gold-standard feat, elusive to all but the most elevated teams. Such a side are supposed to say something grander about European football.

Here, the silence actually says so much more.

Read more here.

Qatar’s sportswashing with their backing of PSG has largely been forgotten (Getty)

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PSG are the first team to do the European 'double-double' since Ajax (1971-73) and Real Madrid (1956-58). 

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