While French League champion PSG was expected to challenge this year’s Champions League title, they weren’t necessarily ‘expected’ to reach the final match, seeing as how hey had a ton of time off after their French Ligue 1 season was suspended following their Feb. 29 win over Dijon and PSG faced little competitive match play before resuming their Champions League quest. No matter, PSG has exceeded expectations and now, the Red and Blues will make their first Champions League final appearance on Sunday, Aug. 23, opposite prohibitive title favorite Bayern Munich. Now, as they seek to pull off the huge upset, let’s find out what PSG will need to do in order to beat the star-studded Bavarians in this year’s UEFA CL final so you can make your bets against their odds to win the Champions League.
UEFA Champions League Odds – How PSG Could Pull Off The Upset
PSG (8-1-1) vs Bayern Munich (10-0-0)
- When: Sunday, August 23, 2020 at 3:00 PM ET
- Where: Estadio da Luz
Champions League Final Odds
PSG has won five straight matches, including consecutive stunning Champions League wins over Atalanta and RB Leipzig on Aug. 12 and Aug. 18 respectively. PSG took out high-scoring Atalanta 2-1 thanks to late goals from Marquinhos and Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting. PSG won the possessions battle in a big way, 63-37 percent while racking up a whopping 17 shots with six of those being on goal. More importantly, they limited offensively-explosive Atalanta to just nine shots with only four of those being on target. After falling into a 1-0 hole at the break, PSG struck late.
“When I came on, I thought to myself, ‘We can’t lose, we can’t go home like that.’ I was confident in myself, confident in the team and then the rest is the history of Paris,” said Cameroon international Choupo-Moting. “It was a crazy game, a tough game and opponents.”
PSG then completely overwhelmed RB Leipzig on Tuesday to reach their first Champions League final. Marquinhos, Angel Di Maria and Juan Bernat all scored goals and PSG’s defense put Leipzig on lock-down.
“I was never relaxed, but how we defended was also the most important thing for me. We had a good mix between determination, spirit and quality,” Thomas Tuchel said afterward.
In addition to his own goal, Di Maria assisted on both of PSG’s other goals.
“We ate them up from minute one,” said man-of-the-match Di Maria. “It’s going to be tough to sleep between now and the final. We want to make history for the club. We succeeded tonight and we’re in the final; that’s very important. We have to continue like tonight to make our dream come true.”
PSG won the possession battle 58-42 percent. While both teams recorded an identical 14 shots, nine of PSG’s attempts were on goal while only three of Leipzig’s were on target.
How PSG Can Beat Bayern Munich
PSG has scored 17 goals in their last six Champions League matches while allowing just two goals defensively. It will be imperative for the Red and Blues to play defense at a high level if they want to keep Robert Lewandowski and the explosive Bavarians in check in the final.
PSG has scored two goals or more in three of their last four Champions League matches and they will most definitely need at least two goals to get past Bayern Munich in the final. The good news is that the Red and Blues have a handful of superstar players in Kylian Mbappe (18 goals), Neymar (13 goals), Mauro Icardi (12 goals) and Di Maria (8 goals). Mbappe and Icardi are tied with a team-high five goals in Champions League play and they’ll need one, if not both, to find the back of the net against Bayern. PSG has gone a bankroll-boosting 7-2-1 ATS and 3-4-3 O/U over their last 10 games. If The Red and Blues can both, shut down Bayern’s chances at the offensive end of the floor while getting at least five really good scoring chances of their own, they could very well pull off the monumental upset in the 2020 Champions League final!
