Two games stand between the last four teams standing and the Champions League final. It would appear that the road to Budapest is going to be filled with drama to the last.
And that's just Paris Saint-Germain vs. Bayern Munich. The clash between the holders and many people's favorites to depose them has the look of a true Champions League blockbuster, the sort that might go one way and then the other, an occasion to be lit up by Michael Olise, Harry Kane and Ousmane Dembele. The competition's two leading scorers facing off over 180 minutes? Absolute cinema.
Arsenal's visit to Atletico Madrid might not quite come with quite the same promise of quality, but intrigue and pressure? There'll be plenty. After all, these are two of the biggest teams never to have lifted the European Cup, and both have delivered some of their best performances of the season on the Champions League stage. Will they deliver at the Metropolitano? We'll come to that after diving into Tuesday's game.
The feel of the last few weeks has been a Paris Saint-Germain back to where they were 12 months ago. Basically, they've been smoking their Premier League opposition once more. Chelsea were obliterated home and away, Liverpool's hopes were raised and dashed quite expertly. It had been a slow start to 2025-26, but that had perhaps been by design. Over the early months of the season, Luis Enrique had given his players at least some of the rest that they didn't get in a Club World Cup summer, and it was only partly down to injury that so few of the Champions League-winning XI had cleared 1,000 minutes by Christmas. Anyway, hadn't Luis Enrique aced this last season? No wonder his players believe he's doing the same this time around.
"I think we are at the same level [as last season]," said Dembele. "We have this desire to win trophies – we will try to go all the way to the end, we will play our game until the end of the competition."
And yet, the wins to get them to the Bayern Munich semifinal didn't look quite as impressive in the doing as they did in the end result. Chelsea weren't outshot in either leg of the round of 16, indeed they had two more in the second leg, and probably would have been alive in the contest for much longer if Liam Rosenior hadn't insisted on playing an inferior goalkeeper. Liverpool didn't do their cause much good with a tactical reshuffle in the first leg of the quarterfinals, but might wonder how differently the contest would have gone if Desire Doue hadn't scored a magnificent opener. At Anfield, there were moments of partial stress for PSG before Ousmane Dembele's late brace.
Add all that in alongside an insipid playoff tie against Monaco, and you have a semifinalist who, one might argue, is winning in the moments rather than over the broad sweep of the ties. Now, it is of course likelier you will do that if you are the team who employs Dembele, Doue and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, but still, didn't the PSG of 2024-25 dominate from minutes one to 180 of all their ties?
The data would say otherwise and partially agrees with Dembele. The graphic above provides us with a 10-game rolling average of PSG's expected goals for, against, and the difference between the two since the start of last season in Ligue 1, the Coupe de France and the Champions League. There is a subtle shade of difference between the spring of this year and last. The attack has not quite peaked like it did just before the last big push across the finish line. Really, however, now that they are at full strength, PSG are who they were.
It is worth reminding ourselves that who they were was not the abiding memory they left us with, that 5-0 obliteration of Inter that might go down as the crowning moment of the Qatari sporting project. They could be that good, but they were also a team that had to grit it out against Aston Villa, that had to ride the shot-stopping excellence of Gianluigi Donnarumma against Arsenal and, even though they were the superior outfit, teetered on the brink against Liverpool.
None of that is to dispute that PSG were the outstanding side in last season's Champions League. They might prove to be the same in this. After all, the data would suggest that they probably are who they were 12 months ago, even if the view to the naked eye is that of a side whose performances don't quite match the heady scorelines they are running up.
It is just that the margin between the clear best team in the field and the third or fourth best might not be that much. Perhaps that is good news for the holders this time around. After all, for the first time in quite a while, perhaps going back to their elimination of Liverpool last year, Luis Enrique's side aren't favorites in a two-legged tie.
That PSG are not favorites is only because Bayern Munich have looked like the most dominant team in Europe for most, if not all, of 2026. Perhaps, though, that is a reflection of who they have had up against them. This is a scoring machine, an unstoppable juggernaut who have very reasonably concluded that they have the best players and should play like it. Vincent Kompany, who will not be on the touchline for the first leg, has proven himself not to be an extremely capable manager because of any new tactical wrinkles but because he has led a talented and high-profile club with sophistication and charisma. On the field, they play with the unshakeable belief of a team that has not come up against anyone better in quite some time.
It therefore makes it all the more intriguing when Bayern do match up against their equals. Not since they lost to Arsenal have we seen that on a team vs. team basis, but in individual match-ups we saw something in the Real Madrid tie that would ask questions of the Bundesliga champions. What do you do when the other team backs themselves to keep the ball in your final third, when they allow Kylian Mbappe and Vinicius Junior to shade the defensive work so that they can punish any turnovers?
The answer in the quarterfinal was that Bayern did not particularly show any inclination to change. Josip Stanisic pushed high from right back, Konrad Laimer did similar on the opposite flank, and Kompany trusted his center backs to deal with turnovers. Or perhaps more accurately, he trusted his team not to make the sort of turnovers that Mbappe and Vinicius could punish. It is what you would do if you are confident that you have the better team. It is probably the optimal approach if you are Bayern Munich and you play vanishingly few high-stakes games against opponents on a comparable level before February every year.
But boy can it feel like a high-risk approach to stick to your principles when the other team is near your level. Can Bayern, who have attempted the most passes in their own third of any team left in the competition, trust in their ability to play through a PSG press? Does a team that has conceded nearly 40% of their goals this season from set pieces need to adjust personnel with a view to the threat their semifinal opponent might cause and that of whoever might lie ahead in the final?
A heavily rotated iteration of this team just conceded three against Mainz, forcing Kompany to unload the superstars from off the bench to turn the tide. There will doubtless have been issues in that game to intrigue Luis Enrique. Kane himself acknowledged the problems Bayern face. "If we don't get our counter-pressing right, if we don't control their counters well, and if we give the ball away carelessly – Paris will be even deadlier in those situations," he said.
Can this team cope if they don't get their counter-pressing right? It feels unknowable.
It's all getting a bit nervy, isn't it? Saturday's 1-0 win over Newcastle was Arsenal at their most agonizing, a set of circumstances foisted upon them as first Kai Havertz and then Eberechi Eze succumbed to injury. The Premier League title race feels like a particularly cruel form of torture meted out on north London.
Meanwhile, the European Cup, whose absence from the Emirates Stadium trophy room is the biggest mark against this club's historical status, has been Arsenal's shelter from the storm. The second leg of a finely poised quarter final against Sporting was as at ease as the fanbase have seemed in months. Mikel Arteta's side have held a two-goal lead for 37 minutes of the Champions League knockout stages this season and have hardly ever seemed to engender stress in their supporters.
It helps no end that those knockout games have not offered the sort of opponents to give Arsenal sleepless nights. There is an obvious rejoinder to why their home ground should be more intimidated by Bournemouth or Fulham than Sporting or Bayer Leverkusen. At least one of those English teams is probably superior to what the Champions League is throwing up. Finishing first in the league phase has been richly rewarded for the Gunners. If they make it to the final, they will have overcome opponents ranked 22nd, 12th and 14th in Club ELO. Without European football to bolster their numbers, Bournemouth rank 13th.