The night Paris Saint-Germain reached their second straight Champions League final, I biked through the happy chaos of Paris, and realised, with surprise: this has become a football city. I’d watched PSG’s semi-final against Bayern Munich at a friend’s flat, and cycling back along the river, I dodged honking cars and dancing fans waving club flags. As usual in Paris, celebrations doubled as a riot: police made 127 arrests. I fell asleep to the bang of fireworks.
In Saturday’s final, PSG meet Arsenal of north London. I’ve spent most of my life in Paris and London, and watched their football identities expand and change. This is, as they say, a tale of two cities.
As a schoolboy in London 40 years ago, I began taking the W7 bus to watch Arsenal at Highbury. You’d walk the last bit through terraced streets, and only on turning a corner would you spot the little stadium — capacity 38,000. I never became an Arsenal fan, but couldn’t resist watching decent football for £5, a price occasionally affordable even to a teenager, if you didn’t mind craning your neck on filthy, packed terraces to glimpse the underwhelming attack of Perry Groves and Martin Hayes.