The Parc des Princes should still be basking in champagne and confetti.
Paris Saint-Germain, the club that for a decade symbolized European underachievement, finally conquered its demons on June 1, with a 5-0 hammering of Inter Milan in Munich.
Their first Champions League title was not just a trophy; it was supposed to be the dawn of a dynasty.
Instead, barely three months later, Paris has been plunged into chaos.
Key stars are injured, their manager is sidelined, and whispers of football’s most bizarre superstition – the so-called “Champions League curse” – have returned with vengeance.
The triumph in Munich had been emphatic, a coronation years in the making.
Goals from Achraf Hakimi, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, teenager Senny Mayulu and a brace from 20-year-old sensation Desire Doue shredded Inter.
Doue, electric on the left wing, capped his night with a thunderous strike from distance that bent under the bar and froze Yann Sommer.
His brilliance earned him UEFA’s Man of the Match award, a medal of honor that in recent years has come with a grim reputation.
Paris initially brushed off the superstition.
This was their time, and with Kylian Mbappe gone to Madrid, Dembele reborn, and Doue emerging as France’s next jewel, there was no sense that history would interfere.
But the history of this so-called curse runs deep, and in Paris it suddenly feels impossible to ignore.
Since 2020, each Champions League final MVP has suffered a devastating injury within a year.
Kingsley Coman’s winning goal for Bayern against PSG was followed by a ruptured ACL.
N’Golo Kante, the heartbeat of Chelsea’s midfield in 2021, was undone by recurring hamstring tears.
Thibaut Courtois, the wall behind Madrid’s triumph in 2022, spent most of the following campaign sidelined with a ligament rupture.
Manchester City’s Rodri, match-winner in 2023, met the same cruel fate.
Dani Carvajal, the unlikely hero for Madrid in 2024, fractured his leg before the autumn leaves had fallen.
Five years, five stars, five injuries.
What started as coincidence hardened into folklore, a ghost story that now stalks Europe’s elite.
When Doue limped off during France’s Nations League tie with Ukraine this September, the fear turned real.
A calf strain will sideline him for a month, not career-ending but ominously on trend.
His absence came at the very moment PSG lost Dembele to a torn hamstring, stripping them of their most dangerous weapon for six weeks.
Then, as if the curse had widened its reach, coach Luis Enrique fractured his collarbone in a nasty cycling accident.
The man who masterminded Paris’s long-awaited triumph will now miss critical weeks on the touchline. “It feels supernatural,” wrote L’Equipe. “From Munich to mayhem in three months – PSG have become prisoners of the curse.”
The timing could hardly be crueler.
The revamped Champions League format handed Paris a brutal draw: Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Arsenal, Bayer Leverkusen, and Atalanta.
At full strength, it was a daunting gauntlet.
Now, with Doue, Dembele, and Enrique all unavailable, survival feels less like a campaign for glory and more like a desperate scramble to stay afloat.
Skeptics might dismiss the curse as media theater, a superstition stitched together from coincidence and the natural risk of injury in grueling seasons.
Yet its consistency unnerves even hardened professionals.
Players admit, in quieter moments, that the pattern lingers in their thoughts.
And it isn’t confined to Paris. Japan’s Kaoru Mitoma and Takehiro Tomiyasu, both standouts in Europe last season, have also been sidelined long-term. Italian media have even tied Atalanta’s spate of injuries to the same mysterious shadow. The folklore, it seems, has traveled.
For PSG supporters, the sting is sharper because the fall cuts through joy.
After years of collapses, of Neymar’s injuries and Mbappe’s drama, after infamous exits to Barcelona, Manchester United, and Bayern, the Champions League was supposed to be the trophy that exorcised all ghosts. Instead, it has ushered them back in a stranger, crueler form.
