Watching PSG’s Champions League win in Paris: Fireworks, tears, flares and Djokovic confusion

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A sporting day that starts with a walk through a sedate garden to the idyllic greenhouse-lined Court Simonne-Mathieu at Roland Garros eventually builds to a crescendo half a kilometre away, with the sweaty outpouring of joy at a dream fulfilled.

Saturday is a day that will always go down in Paris folklore — the day when their football team Paris Saint-Germain finally ended their wait to win the Champions League. A mission that dominated all areas of the city over the weekend, and on Saturday permeates into Roland Garros, the venue for the French Open, one of tennis’s four Grand Slam tournaments.

Leading players like Novak Djokovic even asked publicly not to be scheduled on Saturday evening so they don’t have to miss the final. It turns out even winning 24 Grand Slams doesn’t get you a pass to watch the biggest match in club football and the most significant in the history of the city’s biggest club. He must take on Austria’s Filip Misolic, with many of the spectators glued to their phones to see what was happening in Munich.

Fireworks can be heard at Roland Garros, in the Boulogne-Billancourt area of Paris, throughout the day, as the city gears up for the final against Italian giants Inter. Tennis can get lively, especially in France, where rowdy fans at Roland Garros over the last couple of years have been compared to their footballing counterparts. Maybe there’s something in that but on Saturday evening around 7.30pm local time, leaving Roland Garros and walking towards the Parc des Princes five minutes away feels like another dimension.

This is one of the most passionate fanbases in European football, and while a lucky few managed to get tickets for the final, there are nearly 50,000, who have chosen the next best option — watching on big screens at the club’s Parc des Princes home…

Walking along Boulevard d’Auteuil from Roland Garros, before turning right down the Rue Nungesser-et-Coli, traffic is at a standstill with cars honking their horns, as armed police patrol the streets trying to keep the peace. On arrival at the queue to get into the stadium, a topless fan with a megaphone announces the team news — Bradley Barcola doesn’t start. “Barcola est sur le banc,” the fan screams. Getting into the stadium is a bit of a mess, with massive queues and people penned in so groups can be let in gradually.

(Luc Auffret/Anadolu via Getty Images)

It’s a hot, extremely humid night and fans are growing increasingly agitated. There’s still about an hour until kick-off but no-one wants to miss a moment of this, and there are inevitable tensions with the police and security staff who are holding their ground. Memories go back to the 2022 Champions League final in Paris, which became so dangerous for the Liverpool and Real Madrid fans in attendance.

Eventually, we get in around 8.30pm, half an hour before kick-off. The four big screens on the pitch show the pre-match entertainment, there are fireworks going off just next to them. A big roar goes up when centre-back Marquinhos appears on screen, and the noise is deafening when we get a first glimpse of Luis Enrique, the PSG manager. Throughout the night there are huge cheers whenever he appears — the messiah for this particular faithful.

The whole place crackles with excited anticipation — there’s a real feeling that this is finally their time, a first Champions League 55 years after their founding. It’s also 14 years since the club were taken over by Qatar Sports Investments (QSI), and though they reached the final in 2020 that was behind closed doors because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Generally in that time PSG has been a byword for excess and embarrassing capitulations. Not this team though, which after the failed galacticos era of Neymar, Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi, is loved by the locals.

(Thibaud Moritz/AFP via Getty Images)

The feeling of everyone supporting the same team in a single stadium is special. And to add to the unusual atmosphere are replays of contentious incidents, and the fans scream in unison in the first few minutes when it looks in slow-motion like an Inter defender has gone down after barely any contact.

The early goals from Achraf Hakimi and Desire Doue start the party. There are flares everywhere, the Paris air covered in smoke, the smell is that of a kid’s birthday where too many party poppers have been let off. In the distance, fireworks light the sky behind the stadium, and before Doue takes a shot that will be deflected in for 2-0 there’s a collective intake of breath where, for a moment, everything is silent and perfectly still. Then the assault on the eardrums of 50,000 fans roaring with joy and collectively conveying a message that is becoming increasingly undeniable: this is their year.

(Charlie Eccleshare)

In the second half, it gets better. A third, fourth, even a fifth goal go in. People are crying, hugging each other, one man video calls his father who couldn’t be at the game. Amongst the joy, one of the biggest cheers of the night is reserved for the big screen showing a middle-aged Inter fan in tears. What’s the French for schadenfreude?

And then the final whistle. More fireworks, more tears. At the trophy lift, there’s the call and response from the stadium announcer and the fans. “Ici c’est…” “Paris!” And again, a few more times. PSG anthems blare out, everyone sings, and the stadium rocks to its foundations. We’re kindly asked to leave — show’s over folks.

Except it’s kind of only just beginning. Fans bang the walls, and on the balconies of the apartments just next to the stadium the residents sing and dance with the thousands making their way into the city. Flooding onto the streets, a motorbike revs its engine in unison with the chanting fans, and there are fireworks everywhere — the air thick with smoke. It’s so loud it’s hard to keep your eyes open. About four kilometres away, across the Seine, the Eiffel Tower is lit up in the blue and red of the new champions of Europe. The roads are packed with fans; the cars are going nowhere.

Over at Roland Garros, Djokovic has just finished answering questions from a scrum of journalists after his straight-sets win against Misolic to reach the French Open fourth round. The first question is about the Champions League final, as Djokovic admits he was confused during the match by the frequent celebrations from fans in the stands: “I could hear when they scored and it was way too many times they were celebrating — I was like, ‘This is a lot of goals from Paris, what’s going on?’”

(Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

Amid the joy on the streets, there’s a slight air of menace as fans start sprinting away from police. It’s not really clear what’s going on what with the incessant honking of car horns and general feeling of mayhem. Everyone’s slightly in a daze — that feeling of leaving a bar late at night and stepping back into the real world, or a version of it at least.

(Adnan Farzat/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Ultimately, this is not an especially romantic story. It’s essentially one of a nation state in the Gulf pumping billions of pounds into a European football club, partly as a way of buying influence and legitimacy. And if there’s a sporting lesson, it’s that vast wealth will lead you to achieving your dreams if you start operating sensibly, as PSG have belatedly done.

But a night like Saturday is also about the feelings that football engenders in people, no matter the origins of a team’s success. Even with no skin in the game, it’s hard not to feel swept up by the intoxicating feeling of a profound shared experience, of a dream fulfilled, and for these fans, one shared with the people they love the most.

And so a day that started in the relative oasis of a picturesque tennis court ends with the bedlam of a city gearing up for the mother of all parties.

As Djokovic puts it: “We’re in for a long celebration and probably not much sleep tonight.”

(Top photo: Thibaut Moritz/AFP via Getty Images) )

This news was originally published on this post .

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