This was four glorious games in one. A breathless 90-minute scoreline that looked like a two-leg aggregate. It felt like the death-knell for the era of careful, possession-heavy football – replaced by something much more reckless and thrilling that could make a manager look like a visionary one moment and a novice the next.
This may also have been Luis Díaz’s finest hour, because when the elite in the game turn it on like this in a Champions League semi-final it says something about the measure of the man who stands out. The great Colombia international, formerly of Liverpool, was the beating heart of this Bayern Munich resurgence, a team put on the canvas repeatedly by the European champions, and yet unwilling to accept it was over.
Harry Kane scored the penalty that was the first of this nine-goal extravaganza and for the Englishman the dream of a second Champions League final next month in Budapest is still alive. This was the highest-scoring semi-final game in the Champions League and its predecessor since Eintracht Frankfurt and Rangers shared nine goals in the second leg for a 12-4 aggregate for the Germans in the 1960 European Cup. Still time for more to come in Munich next Wednesday, although it will be hard to repeat the raw energy of this night.
Harry Kane makes NO MISTAKE from the spot to open the scoring for Bayern! 🔴 pic.twitter.com/vIWr2uUTOj
— Prime Video Sport UK (@primevideosport) April 28, 2026
Paris St-Germain were a sensation – they often are, but they could not shake the Bavarians snapping at their ankles and shouldering ahead of them from set-pieces. Between them, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Ousmane Dembélé scored four of the five goals and the second leg is set in PSG’s favour – but only marginally. There was a period from the end of the first half to the hour mark when this semi-final looked to be over as the scoreline climbed from 2-2 to 5-2 in PSG’s favour. The goals from Dayot Upamecano and then Díaz made it a contest all over again.
WHAT A RESPONSE FROM PSG 🤩Kvaratskhelia with a beauty ✨ pic.twitter.com/n0SSIzB9VW
— Prime Video Sport UK (@primevideosport) April 28, 2026
Neither team put much emphasis on defence. Their defences played high, their full-backs went missing. The game was stretched and frantic, with neither settling for long for the horseshoe passing sequences and careful probing. That era ushered in during the late 2000s by Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona side has had many tepid impersonators and this felt like a notable break with that recent past. This tie was played from the start like the last few moments of a World Cup final, and just when it looked like Luis Enrique’s side had finally broken the game so they lost the thread of it.
That was chiefly a result of Díaz’s remarkable power to drive with the ball up the pitch and also, on the opposite side, a masterful performance from Michael Olise, who scored Bayern’s second. A Colombian from the indigenous Wayuu people from the north of the country and a Frenchman born in Hammersmith. Between them they took on the great PSG machine in a very direct fashion.
Playing off the left, Olise showed he could beat as accomplished a defender as Nuno Mendes down the touchline on his left foot. For Olise’s goal at the end of the first half he picked his way through the PSG defence with the deliberate approach of a man committed to doing things in his own time.
STOP THAT OLISE! 😍It's 2-2 in Paris & we're not even at half-time 🤯 pic.twitter.com/GYhSay9SD6
— Prime Video Sport UK (@primevideosport) April 28, 2026
In the Bayern technical area, with the suspended Vincent Kompany in the stands, in his stead was an Englishman. Kompany’s Birmingham-born assistant Aaron Danks, best remembered as a short-lived Aston Villa interim manager between Steven Gerrard and Unai Emery, has his own little piece of Champions League history. “Difficult for me to watch from the stands,” Kompany said. “We’re at home [in the second leg] with 75,000 people in the stadium. I want more [from them]. We want that weight to be there and then the Allianz Arena is a place where anything can happen.”
The blemish was a dubious VAR-recommended review that persuaded referee Sandro Schärer to award a penalty for handball at the end of the first half. The ball seemed to strike Alphonso Davies’s body before clipping his hand. Dembélé would bury the penalty for 3-2. “A harsh decision,” Kane said later. He felt there had been enough chances for Bayern to “kill the game before then”, although PSG may have felt the same. It had been all thrust. Díaz’s quick feet winning the penalty from Willian Pacho’s lunge. Kvaratskhelia turning Joshua Kimmich inside out for the equaliser. João Neves’s feathered header from a corner and then Olise’s goal for Bayern’s second.
Dembele is CLINICAL from the spot to put PSG 3-2 up! 🍿🤩 pic.twitter.com/jeS1hwD5pB
— Prime Video Sport UK (@primevideosport) April 28, 2026
There was much else besides – gaping holes where full-backs might have been – and then, at the start of the second half, a change in momentum. In the stands, Kompany was surrounded by Bayern analysts on laptops presumably trying to locate the team’s full-backs. Unmarked on the right, Achraf Hakimi would cross for Kvaratskhelia, unmarked on the left, to drive in his second and PSG’s fourth goal. Dembélé scored his second from the same side just after the hour. Bayern looked finished at 5-2. They never gave up.
Kvaratskhelia DOUBLES his tally for the evening to make it 4-2 PSG! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/JiCIMNSf46
— Prime Video Sport UK (@primevideosport) April 28, 2026