It’s a Champions League final few could have predicted.
No Real Madrid. No team from the mega-rich Premier League. No rejuvenated Barcelona. And no Harry Kane-inspired Bayern Munich.
Instead, it will be Paris Saint-Germain and Inter Milan facing off to be a somewhat unlikely winner of the biggest prize in club soccer.
Neither club was among the favorites when the new-look, 36-team league phase of the competition rolled out in September.
Indeed, PSG — without Kylian Mbappé and at the start of the post-galacticos era — guaranteed its place in the knockout stage only by winning its final game of the league phase.
Months later, however, PSG has been widely admired as perhaps the most stylish team in the competition after ending the title hopes of a succession of English opponents in its latest bid for its first European title.
Meanwhile, three-time champion Inter, another team lacking superstars but well-coached and with a never-say-die spirit, has gone under the radar once again like it did when reaching the final in 2023 and losing to Manchester City.
Here’s a closer look at the details of the final, the teams and their route to the title match:
Where and when is the final?
Munich's Allianz Arena will host the final on May 31. It's the fifth time the German city has staged the European Cup's title match.
The first three — 1979, 1993, 1997 — were at Munich's previous home, Olympiastadion. The Allianz Arena was the host for Chelsea beating Bayern in a penalty shootout in 2012.
American rock band Linkin Park will play the pre-match show.
Prize money
Real Madrid earned almost 139 million euros ($154 million) from its title-winning campaign in the Champions League last season and this season's winner should get more.
Last year's prize fund of more than 2 billion euros ($2.22 billion) rose by 25% this season in the expanded format featuring more teams (36, up from 32) and more games (eight instead of six in the first stage).
So expect PSG or Inter earn at least 150 million euros ($170 million) if the team winds up as champion.
These coffers can be further boosted across June and July, when both teams will be in the United States for the expanded 32-team Club World Cup. Winning that competition could net PSG or Inter more than $100 million from the $1 billion prize money fund.
Previous meetings
The finalists have never met in the Champions League.
That's a refreshing rarity for two big clubs who regularly compete in Europe.
Route to the final
PSG became the third French team to reach the European Cup final on two occasions, after Reims (1956 and ‘59) and Marseille (1991 and ’93). PSG's other time was in 2020, when losing to Bayern Munich 1-0 in Lisbon.
PSG's road to Munich has gone mostly through England. After seeing off fellow French club Brest in the playoffs, PSG has beaten Liverpool, Aston Villa and lastly Arsenal in successive rounds in the knockout stage — having also defeated then-Premier League champion Manchester City in a key victory in the next-to-last round of the league stage. Qualification was in the balance at that stage, with PSG having won just one of its first five league games only to win its last three.
Inter was a two-time European champion before PSG was even founded in 1970, after titles in 1964 and 1965, while the Italian team added a third European crown in 2010.
Unlike PSG, Inter qualified directly to the last 16 after finishing in fourth place, conceding just one goal in its eight league games. In the knockout stage, Simone Inzaghi's team overcame Feyenoord in the round of 16, Bayern in the quarterfinals and Lamine Yamal and Barcelona in a pair of epic legs in the semifinals.
Contrasting ownerships
PSG's relatively brief history was underwhelming until the club was bought in 2011 by Qatar Sports Investments.
Then came the soccer boom in the capital and the arrival of trophy after trophy — well, at domestic level anyway. PSG has won 11 of the last 13 Ligue 1 titles but now the hardware the Qatari owners want is the Champions League.
There will be extra satisfaction if it happens after a change in approach that has seen the club shed the superstars — Lionel Messi, Neymar and Mbappé — and rely on mostly young and hungry replacements, such as midfielder João Neves and forward Désiré Doué.
It has been a more financially turbulent story at Inter, which has been owned by U.S. investment fund Oaktree since May last year after the eight-year tenure of Chinese retail giant Suning came to an end amid mounting debts.
For three years before that, Inter was owned by a consortium led by Indonesian businessman Erick Thohir, which bought out Massimo Moratti.
PSG has already clinched another French league this season, while Inter is still in a fight with Napoli to retain the Serie A title.
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Steve Douglas is at https://twitter.com/sdouglas80
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
Steve Douglas, The Associated Press
