Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain are gearing up for the Champions League final. The showpiece in Budapest will be the 63rd game of the season for Arsenal and the 56th for Paris Saint-Germain. However, the French side also played seven matches at last summer’s Club World Cup, meaning both teams have played 62 matches since the start of last June.
PSG’s Summer Advantage: Rest vs. Competition
While Arsenal were able to rest properly last summer, PSG were in the US, reaching the final of a competition played in sweltering heat. This started only 14 days after they had beaten Inter in the Champions League final. Their season started exactly one month after the Club World Cup had ended, with the Super Cup against Tottenham. Their defence of the Ligue 1 title began just a few days later.
The newly expanded Club World Cup set up the teams involved for a difficult season, where their players were forced to play catchup on their rivals when it came to rest and recuperation. There is no way of quantifying how much Chelsea’s players were affected by their run to the final, but it is no coincidence that they only won two of their first six league games of the season and went on to finish way down in 10th. Cole Palmer, for one, had such a disappointing campaign that he will not even be at this summer’s World Cup as a result.
Arsenal’s Demanding Domestic Schedule
Since the new season started, Arsenal have played more matches than any other team in any of the top five European leagues. They went deep in the League Cup and the FA Cup. Their opportunities to rotate have been few and far between, unlike PSG.
Enrique’s Rotation Strategy
When PSG’s domestic season started against Nantes, their team contained just two of the players who had started the Champions League final a couple of months before. Nuno Mendes, Achraf Hakimi, Ousmane Dembélé, Désiré Doué and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia came off the bench to force a 1-0 win, but that level of reinforcement has not been necessary every week.
Luis Enrique has regularly rested his players from Ligue 1 games. So, even though PSG have played a lot of matches, their most important players have been rotated heavily and should go into this weekend’s final relatively fresh.
Many of PSG’s best players have played very little domestic football this season. Ballon d’Or winner Dembélé started just 11 of their 34 Ligue 1 games; Neves, Mendes and Fabián Ruiz made 13 starts each; Kvaratskhelia 18, Doué and Hakimi 16, and Marquinhos 11. And it’s not like they come off the bench all that much, either. Not one of them has played ev