BUDAPEST, Hungary — Winning the Champions League was so nice, Paris Saint-Germain had to do it twice.
PSG became back-to-back European champion by beating Arsenal 4-3 on penalties in a dramatic final in Budapest that ended 1-1 after extra time on Saturday.
“It’s incredible,” captain Marquinhos said. “From the very first day of this season, the coach said it’s hard to win, and winning twice is even more difficult. So we all had to get back to work. That was the mentality.”
Arsenal defender Gabriel Magalhaes fired the last of his team’s penalties over the bar to hand PSG the shootout win.
The French giant is only the second team to retain the trophy in the modern era after all-time king of Europe Real Madrid.
Luis Enrique became a three-time winner as a coach and has molded a team that is simply too good even for the best the continent has to offer. That includes an Arsenal team that won the Premier League last week and topped the first stage of the Champions League with a perfect winning record, finishing 10 points and 10 places ahead of PSG.
That mattered little in Puskas Arena as PSG reaffirmed its status as the dominant force in European soccer.
“It’s even more special because we knew before the match how difficult it would be,” Luis Enrique said. “I think it’s deserved over the course of the whole season, even if the final was very closely contested.”
After demolishing Inter Milan 5-0 in last year’s final, PSG endured a tougher foe as Arsenal sat deep and relied on the best defense in the competition.
PSG dominated possession but created little after going behind to a Kai Havertz goal in the sixth minute. It took an Ousmane Dembélé penalty in the 65th to level the score and take the final to extra time for the first time in 10 years.
PSG coach in elite company
By going back to back, Luis Enrique achieved what his good friend Pep Guardiola could not after winning Champions Leagues at Barcelona and Manchester City. Luis Enrique joined Carlo Ancelotti, Bob Paisley, Zinedine Zidane and Guardiola in an elite group of coaches with at least three European Cups.
The next target will be to emulate Madrid’s three in a row under Zidane from 2016-18. And with a starting lineup in Budapest with an average age of less than 24, Luis Enrique has built a team that has the potential to dominate for years.
“It’s crazy, it’s crazy. We’re going to enjoy it first, and after we’re going to work and work again because we want more. We are really hungry. We are a young team, and we know we are really ambitious. So next season we have to go again,” Désiré Doué told broadcaster TNT Sports.
Having waited 22 years to get its hands back on the Premier League trophy, Arsenal’s wait in Europe goes on.
This was its 226th game in the European Cup or Champions League without lifting the trophy. No other team has played so many without being champion.
“First of all you have to go through that pain, digest it and then turn it into fuel and improve and reach a different level because it will demand a different level with the quality that is around Europe,” manager Mikel Arteta said.
“I want to congratulate PSG because they are, in my opinion, the best team in the world. What they are able to do with the ball, individual actions, I haven’t seen it (before).”
Jaxon Smith-Njigba was sent a trophy for Offensive Player of the Year that contained multiple typos.
But, hey, at least they got his name right.
The Seattle Seahawks receiver posted a video to his Instagram Story on Monday in which he displays the award from the NFL and Associated Press with an engraving that appears to read “2025 Defensive Player Of TheYear.”
“It’s getting disrespectful, guys,” Smith-Njigba says before pointing to the word that indicates the wrong side of the football on which he plays. “DEE-fense? Come on, bro.”
He then pointed to the two words that were merged together without a space at the end.
“One word?” he said. “Man.”
In a statement emailed to The Times, the NFL owned up to spelling the word “Offensive” wrong but said it was actually spelled “Oefensive” and the font made the first letter appear to be a D. On the trophy, the first letter of that word does appear the same as the one in “Of.”
“The league made the mistake. We sincerely apologize to Jaxon for the error and are in the process of creating and shipping him a new trophy,” the NFL wrote.
“Of course, like the teams he played against this year, we know how great an offensive player he is. We just had a problem spelling it.”
The third-year player out of Ohio State made a second straight Pro Bowl last season for the eventual Super Bowl champion Seahawks, with 119 receptions for a league-high 1,793 yards (eighth best all-time) and 10 touchdowns.
Comedian Druski mispronounced Smith-Njigba’s name several times when announcing him as the Offensive Player of the Year during the NFL Honors ceremony in February.
Here comes Bob Chesney’s rebuild. And Iamaleava’s redemption. An exceptional head coach and an exciting quarterback, with the wind at their backs, racing toward a relatively breezy schedule?
USC defensive tackle Carlon Jones grabs UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava during a game on Nov. 29.
(Kyusung Gong / Associated Press)
Sky’s the limit, man.
Watch them dip and dance and make defenders miss all the way to New York. Watch the cautionary tale about the perils of the transfer portal turn into a fairy-tale comeback.
No, that’s not me building castles in the sky.
Consider the unprecedented heights to which Chesney took tiny James Madison, and think of the places he can go with a junior QB whose trajectory had him headed toward Heisman Trophy hopefuldom before turbulence hit.
Iamaleava arrived in Knoxville, Tenn., with more hype than any quarterback since Peyton Manning. The 6-foot-6 Long Beach native, with an outside hitter’s rocket arm and the gazelle-like gait, was considered the nation’s No. 2 overall recruit out of Warren High in Downey. As a redshirt freshman in 2024, he won 10 games and led the Volunteers to the College Football Playoff.
Heisman buzz was building. Until it wasn’t, deadened last spring by the contract dispute that was debated ‘round the college football world. There was disagreement between Iamaleava’s camp and Tennessee — which was reportedly paying him more than $2 million per season, less than the going rate for some comparable quarterbacks and more than the Bruins reportedly offered.
UCLA — 3-9 last season and with only two bowl appearances in eight years — isn’t anyone’s idea of a shortcut back to glory. But there is this: The Bruins seem really to have Ted Lasso’d a certain energy these days. A can-do frequency. Joy and positivity are in.
UCLA coach Bob Chesney leads the Bruins through their first spring football practice at Spaulding Field on April 2.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Alysa Liu, the figure-skating psychology-student Olympic champion? She said there’s a new golden rule: Am I having a good time?
And mercy, the No. 6-ranked softball team — whose silly postgame interviews have gone viral — is having a record-smashing season.
Now we also have Chesney extra-cheesing out here, showing up with free pizzas at fraternities, outreach to get the bros out to the Bruins’ spring game Saturday at the Rose Bowl.
But how does Iamaleava fit into this bright motif?
Perfectly, actually. When I asked him last year what he was telling his teammates after head coach DeShaun Foster was fired three weeks into the season, sky falling, wheels falling off, Iamaleava smiled his easy smile: “Man, just keep the belief.”
If that reads like a cliché, imagine the coolest guy in school saying it, and meaning it.
Iamaleava has a Long Beach lean, laid back and comfortable in his skin. He’s super-tight with his seven siblings, and super-proud of their Samoan heritage. And even though he and his younger brother Madden, a backup UCLA quarterback, were always “the toughest dudes on the field,” former Warren coach Kevin Pearson said, “they are the nicest, sweetest off of it.”
But wasn’t Nico the villain? The bad guy? That disloyal, greedy kid at the center of college football’s first apparent holdout?
The criticism was so loud — and so wrong, Pearson said — it had the man stressing. “It made my stomach hurt,” he said, “what people were saying about Nico.”
Pan out and Nico is a face in a crowd. For example, of the top 600 football prospects in the class of 2021, more than 60% of them transferred at least once, and 42 of the top 50 quarterbacks changed schools, according to the Athletic.
And he was about the only thing that was good about last season’s Bruins.
UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava passes the ball during an upset of Penn State at the Rose Bowl on Oct. 4.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
He was their leading passer and rusher. Of UCLA’s 24 touchdowns, he accounted for 17, including five in the Bruins’ 42-37 victory over No. 7 Penn State, which earned him a slew of national weekly honors, including Big Ten Offensive Player of the Week.
But the Bruins won only three games. The whole season was a hot mess, though you wouldn’t have known it, talking to Nico.
He seemed to get it. Not like he understood the assignment of rehabilitating his image, but with the sincerity of someone who appreciates what’s actually hard.
You might remember, his mom, Leinna, was diagnosed with breast cancer when he was 14.
“She definitely opened my eyes, just as a young kid growing up,” said Iamaleava, noting that she is OK now, busy traveling all over the country with his younger volleyball-playing sisters.
“She got diagnosed my freshman year and it was just kind of time to grow up and take care of the little ones. That changed my mindset and my perspective on life. Life’s short, you know? And we’re very blessed to be here and wake up every day.”
Nico could have been defensive in the face of criticism and failure, but he never was. Could have disappeared after defeats as some quarterbacks have, but he didn’t.
His mantra: “That’s on me, man.” Even when it wasn’t.
Despite everything, he was overly accountable, gracious under pressure, upbeat.
“Think about what he had to go through last year,” Chesney said. “He got the preseason, had a couple weeks with the guys, then he got into season, had a couple weeks with the guys, and then all hell broke loose, right?
UCLA offensive linemen Garrett Digiorgio, left, and Sam Yoon, right, help quarterback Nico Iamaleava up after he ran for extra yards against Penn State at the Rose Bowl on Oct. 4.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
“To be able to stick with it and stay through that, you’re just probably trying to keep your head above water. And a lot of our conversations are about that, ‘Hey, this is different this time around.’”
Way different. Chesney has revamped UCLA’s roster with 40-plus transfers, including several key contributors from the JMU team that made the College Football Playoff.
And then there’s Nico, looking like everybody’s big brother at spring practices, smack-talking and celebrating the guys, as engaged as Chesney but easier to spot because his golden helmet glistens above everyone else’s.
“We did a leadership vote,” Chesney said, “and it was undeniable, [Nico] was the No. 1 vote on this entire team to be the leader. And I wanted to just share that with him and make sure he didn’t have to wonder, ‘Do these guys respect me?’ They do. And not only by the position you play, but by the way you play it. By the way you handle it off the field.”
By smiling through it all, even in the immediate aftermath of the Bruins’ loss to New Mexico, their third loss in as many weeks, when it looked like UCLA might not win all season.
“This is a game that as a little kid you loved to play,” Nico said that night. “A lot of [us] are treating this like a job. We gotta get back to having fun.”
And now that Nico and the new-look Bruins have that kite in the air, watch them run with it.
