EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – Wearing their blue, red and white jerseys, Paris Saint-Germain supporters were surrounded by white shirts.
Real Madrid fans were 95% of the crowd at MetLife Stadium for Wednesday’s Club World Cup semifinal, the shirts of Los Blancos radiant in the harsh summer sun. Yet, it was PSG fans in a couple sections behind one goal who cheered virtually from start to finish as their team moved within one win of a historic quadruple.
A 4-0 rout of Real Madrid in a Club World Cup semifinal following a 5-0 wipeout of Inter Milan in the Champions League final reinforced that PSG may be the dominant soccer team of the mid-2020s.
“We have always said that the collective work by the players is what’s helping us,” said Fabián Ruiz, who scored twice as PSG built a three-goal lead in the first 24 minutes. “We are a great group, a young group that is working well.”
PSG moved on to Sunday’s final against Chelsea in the first expanded Club World Cup with a chance to win its fourth major title of the season exactly 100 days after it clinched Ligue 1 on April 5. It added the Coupe de France by beating Reims 3-0 on May 24, then romped over Inter seven days later.
PSG’s blue, red and white jerseys don’t have glamorous names pressed across the back, and they may not be as ubiquitous as the the red shirts of Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal, Manchester City’s light blue or Chelsea’s royal blue, but the team is filling up the trophy display at Parc des Princes, its cramped, outdated stadium not far from Roland-Garros and the Bois de Boulogne.
On May 31 at Munich, Achraf Hakimi got the first goal 12 minutes in, Désiré Doué scored the next two and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Senny Mayulu added one goal each.
This time, Ruiz scored in the sixth minute and Ousmane Dembélé in the ninth following glaring mistakes by defenders Raúl Asencio and Antonio Rüdiger, and Ruiz made it 3-0 to cap a counter. Gonçalo Ramos added a goal in the 87th.
Dembélé, this year’s Ligue 1 Golden Boot winner with 21 goals, started for the first time since straining his left quadriceps with France on June 5. He missed the Club World Cup group stage and was a substitute in PSG’s first two knockout matches, scoring in second-half injury time during Saturday’s 2-0 quarterfinal win over Bayern Munich.
“This is the first match in this World Cup that we can use Usman as a normal player,” PSG coach Luis Enrique said. “I think he is the best player this season by a long term and I think he deserves to win everything because he gave everything to the team and the team is going to achieve trophies, which is the most important thing for a club.”
Real Madrid has 15 European and five world titles, a modern global superpower brand established two decades ago in the Galacticos era of David Beckham, Zinedine Zidane and Luis Figo, then lifted loftier by Cristiano Ronaldo from 2009-18 and the rise of social media.
PSG hadn’t won a Ligue 1 title since 1995 when Qatar Sports Investments took over in 2011. Paris has won 11 of 13 French championships since 2013 but until May failed to become Europe’s best, despite emulating Madrid’s star collection when its lineup included Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé.
A group achieved more than the star system.
“We’ve all made history, that is, the players, the staff, the sports director, the managers, the fans, we’ve all made history,” Enrique, hired in July 2023, said through an interpreter.
PSG dominated every aspect with a 631-255 advantage in completed passes and 67% possession, including 76.5% in the first half.
“It’s a painful defeat. We were not up to standard today,” Real coach Xabi Alonso through an interpreter.
PSG has outscored opponents 16-1 in six matches, getting three goals from Ruiz, two each from Dembele, Hakimi and João Neves, and one apiece from Doué, Lee Kang-in, Kvaratskhelia, Mayulu, Ramos and Vitinha. It hasn’t allowed a goal since a 1-0 loss to Botofogo in its second group-stage match.
“We’re truly happy to be in another final. Now we have to enjoy it because we’re doing something historic,” Ruiz said. “It’s very difficult to reach every final this season, and now we’re one step away.”
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AP freelance writer Nuria Diaz Muñoz contributed to this report.
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AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
