The victory of the PSG Champions League was exciting. It was always the creation of sports | Champions League

PThe success of Aris Saint-Germain in the Champions League final on Saturday was a victory for youth and adventure. It was a victory for a team built with a coherent vision, and a reprimand to those who believe that the game consists in collecting the biggest names. It was a victory for Luis Enrique, a very good coach who underwent a terrible personal tragedy. It was a victory for avant-garde, progressive and fluid football.

But it was also a victory for the creation of sports.

If you could divorce the game from its context, it was fascinating. PSG was brilliant and although it was horrible, at least part of this horror was caused by the relentless energy of PSG. The margin of five goals was the widest of any final of the European Cup or the Champions League and it is difficult to believe that a final was as unilateral (at least to the final of the Champions of Concacaf of the next day, won by the same score 5-0).

Four times before, there had been a margin of four goals in the Champions League final. There was the legendary 7-3 victory of Real Madrid against Eintracht Francfurt in Hampden Park in 1960, the game which therefore inspired the future manager of Manchester United, Alex Ferguson. But part of the fascination was that Frankfurt was also an exceptional side. They had beaten the 12-4 rangers on semi aggregates and they were good enough to take the lead – even if their second and third goals were in a burst of four goals between the 71st and 75th minutes.

Bayern beat Atlético 4-0 in 1974, but it was in a replay. When Milan defeated Barcelona 4-0 in 1994, it was a shock and a huge tactical victory for Fabio Capello over Johan Cruyff, but until the fourth entered, there was still the feeling that Barcelona could return. Milan's 4-0 victory against Steaua Bucharest in 1989 may have been the closest to Saturday; They were emphatic winners and Arrigo Sacchi said that it was closest to his side to the realization of his football ideal.

Even when Barcelona preceded Manchester United in 2011, United had enough resilience to restrict them to three, even to force an unlikely equalizer. It was not the capitulation of Inter.

Barcelona had to watch the final of Saturday with disbelief; How did they lose the semi-final about it? How had they authorized themselves again and again to be defeated in sets of set and on the counter?

The meaning is that Saturday will be a decisive victory. This is a young PSG team. The Champions League is a notoriously difficult tournament to keep for everyone outside Real Madrid, but there is no reason why this can not be the first Champions League of many. After the years of the club as a famous circus, which has certainly helped to establish their brand, they have a rational recruitment policy and an intense and gifted manager. And they are undoubtedly fun to watch.

This is what makes the creation of sports so insidious. On the pitch, PSG is what a football club should be. But the fact remains that they belong to Qatari Sports Investments, and that state support gives them a huge advantage over other clubs funded by more traditional means. QSI invested in PSG six months after the meeting at the Élysée Palais in November 2010 – a month before Qatar won the right to welcome the 2022 World Cup – between the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president of UEFA, Michel Platini and Tamim Al -Thani, the Prince of Hurtia of Qatar – now the Emir. PSG was only part of the wave of Qatari investment in France, although it was stressed that Platini maintains that it had already decided to vote for Qatar.

Whatever the raptor that the investment capital funds have certain elite clubs can be, they do not have the infinite wealth of those supported by a state. Inter is one of the three large in Italy. They won the European Cup / Champions League three times. For a long time, they were supported by the richness of the Moratti family. These are in no way shown. And yet, according to Deloitte, their annual income is less than half that of PSG. Among the PSG sponsors are Qatar Airways and Qatar Tourism Agency; State support can oil a lot of wheels.

Qatar is a country In which workers are systematically exploited, women are subject to male guardianship laws, homosexual relations are prohibited and freedom of expression is seriously limited. It is also the country that welcomed the largest world cup final of all time in 2022 and which has the best team in European football (and therefore global). Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the president of PSG, is also the president of the BeIN media group, a major player in the broadcast of football, and is the head of the European club association, in which he was sitting on Saturday next to the president of UEFA, Aleksander Ceferin. He is extremely influential and is responsible, ultimately, for QSI, for which he is president.

Inter has lost in two of the last three finals of the Champions League. The two defeats presented themselves to the state clubs. These are modern football, the scene of geopolitical maneuvers. Previously, it was easy to laugh at PSG, which had spent a fortune for aging stars who collapsed reliably under pressure. This last iteration is more like a football team. He is admirable in many ways. Football is both exciting and successful. But it is always the creation of sports.

That day …

Before the BBC exceeds the highlights of the 2-0 victory of Chile over Italy during the 1962 World Cup, the presenter David Coleman Warned of viewers That what they were going to see was: “the most stupid, appalling, disgusting and shameful football exhibition, perhaps in the history of the game”.

He was not wrong. The first fault was committed after 35 seconds and things had become so uncontrollable in the eighth minute that Giorgio Ferrini Italian was sent for a fault on Honorino Landa. He refused to leave the field, leading to a fray which was only finished by the police intervention. In the confusion, Léonel Sánchez of Chile landed a left hook on Humberto Maschio, breaking his nose. While the chaos continued, Sánchez got out with Mario David's cuff in the face, but David responded a few minutes later with a steering wheel to the head for which he was sent. Chile has won what has become known as the Battle of Santiago 2-0.

The violence had been caused by critical articles written by two Italian journalists while they covered the draw in Santiago several months earlier. The two had the feeling of not showing up for the tournament itself.

• It is an extract from football with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look of the Guardian US during the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Do you have a question for Jonathan? Send an email to soccerwithjw@theguardian.com, and he will respond to the best in a future edition.