Champions League 2023: Can PSG Achieve a Historic Three-Peat?

The Champions League lights go back on this week, and somewhere in Madrid on 5 June next year, one club will climb the steps and grab the trophy everyone else has been chasing all season.

Paris St-Germain are trying to make history. Two titles in a row already put them in rare company. A third would drag them into a realm usually reserved for teams built around a Cristiano Ronaldo. They don’t have him. They do have the target on their backs.

Five English clubs are lining up to knock them off. Arsenal, last season’s beaten finalists, carry the weight of expectation from the Premier League. Manchester City lurk, Bayern Munich reload, Real Madrid reconfigure, Barcelona surge. The league phase starts on Tuesday. The arguments have already started.

Can anyone stop PSG’s tilt at a three‑peat?

Julien Laurens does not buy the idea of a PSG dynasty stretching to three consecutive titles.

“If PSG do the three-peat, it would be an incredible achievement. I don't think they will do it,” he says. Two in a row, he argues, is already special. Three is “impossible unless you've got Cristiano Ronaldo in your team, which they don't”.

He still expects them to go deep. At least a semi-final, in his view. But the climb gets steeper with every year you stay at the summit.

Laurens looks elsewhere for the eventual winner. He is unconvinced by the early outlines of the Jose Mourinho–Real Madrid project, so his gaze falls on Bayern Munich and Arsenal as the two sides most likely to reach the final.

“They are probably the teams, other than PSG, who have deserved to be there the most in the past two seasons,” he argues. The decisive factor for him? Arsenal’s defence.

To Laurens, Mikel Arteta’s side have “the best defence in Europe by far and that's what wins you titles”. His bracket: Arsenal to win it, Bayern as close runners-up, PSG to make the last four.

Guillem Balague sees PSG from a different angle. He sees strain, but also structure.

PSG’s start to the season has been uneven. Results have wobbled. Performances have fluctuated. Balague sees the cost of living on the edge of tactical innovation.

Luis Enrique is still pushing his team to live at the cutting edge of the game – high tempo, dynamic football, relentless pressing. The new league phase offers him a laboratory. A place to experiment, to break and rebuild, to accept “strange results” before the real grind from January onwards.

“As the main axis is there, I expect them to get very close to winning it again,” Balague says. The core remains, even if the form line jerks.

Arsenal, Bayern, Barcelona – the chasing pack

If PSG wobble, who is ready to step in?

Balague is emphatic about one club: Barcelona. “Barcelona are flying,” he says. Hansi Flick still wants another centre-back and a number nine to push them to the next level, but he feels they are on the way regardless. The structure is taking shape, the style returning, the confidence visible.

Arsenal, in his eyes, have cracked something more intangible. They have “found a way to win regularly”, and that matters. A team that has shed the burden of proving itself plays with a different kind of freedom. Balague believes that release will push key players to an even higher level.

Those three – PSG, Barcelona, Arsenal – should, in his view, be in the semi-finals, draw permitting. The fourth spot? That rests with Bayern Munich, Real Madrid or Manchester City, again depending on how the balls fall.

Laurens, though, is clear: for him, the final is Bayern versus Arsenal, and Arsenal finally lifting the trophy that slipped from their grasp last season.

The stars to watch

This edition of the Champions League is not just about the usual giants. It is also a stage for players ready to step into the spotlight, or to confirm they belong there.

Laurens picks five.

• First, Jude Bellingham. A season of huge importance for him at Real Madrid, now under Mourinho, operating in a number 10 role that Laurens believes suits him perfectly. After an impressive World Cup, he expects that momentum to continue. Goals, influence, decisive moments. Bellingham as the heartbeat of a reshaped Madrid.
• Then Nico Paz at Como. Their first Champions League campaign, Cesc Fabregas on the touchline, and Paz wearing the number 10 shirt at the centre of everything they do with the ball. Laurens calls him a special player, still in the making but heading rapidly towards the top level.
• Then comes “Mr Champions League” himself in Laurens’ eyes: Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. Two extraordinary seasons at PSG have turned him into one of the competition’s must-watch players. Off the left, cutting inside or going down the line, dangerous on both feet, technically superb, scoring spectacular goals. Laurens sees him firmly in the Ballon d’Or conversation and describes him as the player who gets you “on the edge of your sofa”.
• From Lens, back in the Champions League after pushing PSG all the way in Ligue 1, Laurens highlights Ismaelo Ganiou. A 21-year-old centre-back: strong, quick, physical, comfortable on the ball. He expects Ganiou to earn a move to a big Premier League club at the end of the season.
• Finally, Donyell Malen. Since leaving Aston Villa for Roma, he has been prolific, scoring almost a goal a game as a lone striker in Gian Piero Gasperini’s side. Roma’s return to the Champions League brings their attacking football back to the main stage, and Laurens believes we will see Malen restored to his best.

Balague’s list overlaps and diverges.

• At Bayern Munich, Harry Kane is on what he calls a campaign for the Ballon d’Or. Balague believes he deserves to be in the running and does not see his level dropping in a Bayern side tailored to his strengths.
• At Barcelona, teenager Lamine Yamal wants more. He has set his sights on the Champions League. Flick’s idea is clear: a team defending high and with intensity, a platform for Yamal to shine in big spaces and big moments.
• Kvaratskhelia appears again. Balague is convinced there is still another level to come from the PSG winger. With the French champions expected to go far, he sees Kvaratskhelia again rescuing them in tight games and winning big ties almost on his own. In his mind, a future Ballon d’Or winner.
• Then there is Kaua Elias at Shakhtar. The club’s history with Brazilian talent is long and lucrative. Balague believes the 20-year-old could be the next in that line, a player polished in Ukraine and sold on for a huge fee.
• And at Arsenal, Martin Odegaard. After a difficult, injury-hit season last year, the Norwegian has started this campaign strongly. Balague sees him as a player who can dominate games, with a more confident team around him that needs his leadership. He looks ready to take it.

New faces, old names, and dangerous outsiders

The Champions League always throws up new stories from unfamiliar places. Balague has his eye on a few.

He loves what Fabregas is building at Como and the fact the former Spain midfielder has turned down offers to stay with the project. There is a freedom there, he says. Fabregas can get things wrong without the sky falling in, which lets him keep pushing his ideas. Once swimming against the tide, he is now, in Balague’s words, on the front of the train of modern football. The expectation: Como reach the knock-out stages.

Elsewhere, LASK have already made a statement by knocking out Celtic. The Austrian side showed a high competitive level in that tie. Balague thinks a home win and a respectable points total would mark a successful first group campaign, but he does not see them qualifying.

Sabah, from Azerbaijan, intrigue him too. Their success is built on organisation, but the draw is brutal: trips to Arsenal and Manchester United, home games against Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund. Balague expects one or two surprise results, not enough to carry them through.

Then there is Viking. Bayern, Atletico, Napoli and Aston Villa stand in their way, a brutal section on paper. Yet Norwegian football is rich in clever coaches, competitive players and well-drilled teams. Balague believes Viking could be the ones to turn that potential into a place in the knock-outs.

So the stage is set. PSG chase history, Arsenal chase redemption, Barcelona chase rebirth, Bayern and Real Madrid chase their own standards. Behind them, a wave of emerging stars and ambitious outsiders wait for a misstep.

By the time Madrid rolls around in June, will it be the old power, the nearly men, or the new order lifting that famous trophy into the Spanish night?