Longest season ends with Bayern beating PSG for 6th Euro Cup

Breaking the silence beating a drum, his Bayern Munich jersey replaced by a “Champions of Europe” T-shirt, Joshua Kimmich wanted to savor the scene of glory.

Two hours after setting up the goal that secured Bayern’s sixth European Cup, Kimmich emerged from the tunnel to walk back onto the empty confetti-covered pitch where his team had beaten Paris Saint-Germain 1-0 on Sunday night.

Soon he was joined, sitting in the center circle, by David Alaba, the winners’ medal around his bare chest, and Serge Gnabry in a Bayern hat, swigging from a bottle.

“When you win a title like this with brothers on the pitch,” Kimmich had said shortly after the full-time whistle, “that’s the maximum you can ask for.”

On a continent where more than 200,000 have died from the coronavirus, the longest and most disrupted of peacetime men’s European football seasons ended in emptiness and near silence in Lisbon Sunday night. Just as it was for so much of a first Champions League final played without fans.

Only a few hundred people were allowed into the Benfica stadium in Lisbon, because of pandemic restrictions, to see PSG academy graduate Kingsley Coman head in the winner from Kimmich’s cross in the 59th minute.

It was Gnabry attacking down the right that unpicked the PSG defense before passing to Thomas Muller. The forward deftly clipped the ball back to Kimmich, who spotted Coman running unchecked into the penalty area.

The Frenchman netted a 43rd goal of a perfect European campaign that has seen Bayern become the first team to win all 11 Champions League matches.

“I feel a lot of joy, but also sadness for PSG,” said Coman, who left his boyhood club in 2014 — first for Juventus — after feeling undervalued. “It hurts my heart a bit.”

MLS: Raul Ruidiaz scored twice and the visiting Seattle Sounders defeated the Portland Timbers 3-0 in an eerily fanless Cascadia Cup match.

After a scoreless first half that included what looked like an early Portland goal negated by video review, Ruidiaz’s shot hit the cross bar and went into the goal in the 72nd minute. He added a second goal in the 83rd.

Less than two minutes later, Seattle’s Kelvin Leerdam added a third goal, Ruidiaz getting the assist. It was Seattle’s third straight win in Portland.