Goalkeeper
Gianluigi Donnarumma (Paris Saint-Germain)
He does have his weaknesses, such as the occasional panic under the crossed ball, but this was the season the Italian reclaimed his title as the world’s best goalkeeper. PSG’s path to glory saw him outshine Ederson, Alisson, and Emi Martínez before besting Yann Sommer in the final. Donnarumma made a series of saves only he can make, throwing that huge, rangy frame to its full expanse while playing behind a backline built to attack rather than concentrate on defence.
Defenders
Achraf Hakimi (PSG)
If this is the age of full-back being the most multipurpose player in football, then Hakimi is best in class. The Moroccan matched defensive rigour with attacking instincts that saw him score four goals and supply five assists in PSG’s run, including the opening strike of the final. His signing in 2021 was probably the first building block of the team that reigned supreme in 2025.
Willian Pacho (PSG)
Marquinhos is the long-serving veteran of the champions, but his partner, Pacho, signed from Eintracht Frankfurt last year for €45m, has completed the Parisians’ backline. He became the first Ecuadorean to lift the trophy after his dominant display in Munich blunted Inter’s Lautaro Martínez and Marcus Thuram. Playing all 17 matches and logging more minutes than any other player with 1,542, Pacho also won the ball back far more than any player: 124 times.
Alessandro Bastoni (Inter)
Munich was a living nightmare for Inter defenders. They also conceded six across the two legs in their semi-final classic with Barcelona. But to focus on those matches is to forget the supremacy the Inter defence enjoyed in the extended group stage, where they conceded just a single goal in eight matches. Until the semis and final, Bastoni, an Italian defender of the classic style, had marshalled a three-man defence performing far better in Europe than in Serie A, but still ended a campaign of which he can be proud in tears.
Nuno Mendes (PSG)
Mirroring Hakimi’s command of his flank in attack and defence, Mendes was tasked in the final with stopping the runs of Inter’s Denzel Dumfries, one of the competition’s most effective players this season. The Dutchman ended up chasing Mendes’s shadow. That followed a season where the Portuguese player, just 22 years old, scored four Champions League goals and ravaged opponents, both attackers and defenders, with his athleticism. Mohamed Salah has rarely been kept so quiet.
Midfielders
João Neves (PSG)
PSG’s title-winning team did not come cheap but they have invested well, with a summer deal worth €70m landing Neves, one of the most wanted young midfielders in Europe. Small but combative, Neves now stars in the best midfield in Europe in combination with Vitinha and Fabián Ruiz. He had been a slow burn through his first season. When PSG were playing to stay alive in the group stage, Neves was the match-winner against Manchester City, Seven tackles, all successful, seven shots, including a goal, he began to embody a team fighting like wild dogs to win the ball back.
Declan Rice (Arsenal)
English clubs had a chastening Champions League season, mostly because of PSG, and Arsenal were the semi-final victims. Despite Mikel Arteta’s protestations, the Gunners were well beaten but this was the club’s best run in the competition in more than a decade. At the fulcrum was Rice, who is maturing into a midfielder who can run a game, as he did most obviously against Real Madrid – a two-legged performance Gunners fans will happily fall back on as something to cherish after their team’s exit. Rice usually saved his marauding best for Europe.
Pedri (Barcelona)
If the modern PSG are a hyper-realised, updated version of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona team, the club he long left behind proved to be this season’s entertainers. Hansi Flick is football’s great gambler, his team a high-line, high wire act. In the middle of the morass is Pedri, a midfielder of balance, creativity and now experience. Thankfully, he is recovered from the injury problems that his 75-game 2020 caused and fills the mould Andrés Iniesta once did, never looking like losing the ball, forever dangerous to the opposition.
Forwards
Ousmane Dembélé (PSG)
A mark of Luis Enrique’s quality as a coach is that he made a productive, consistent player out of one of the game’s great enigmas. PSG played mostly without a centre-forward but it was Dembélé who led the line, cutting in from flanks, operating as a false No 9, interchanging with his fellow wingers, his movement creating space and angles to work with.
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (PSG)
There may be little coincidence that once the Georgian was bought from Naples in January, PSG’s status as a giant struggling to make the knockout stages was shedded as they instead became the most decisive champions in European Cup history. The best attacking player in Serie A, a maverick talent that resembles both a throwback and the future proved a revelation in destroying defences. The English teams in particular struggled with him, and when he was going though on goal in Munich, he was able to show off his party-trick finish, at the near post.
Lamine Yamal (Barcelona)
The best team did not have the best player, and that’s how it’s supposed to work. When Barcelona were torching opposition defences, winning games from impossible positions, it seemed as if Lamine Yamal would win the Champions League at 17. He will just have to do it at 18. European defences had no answer to his speed and quality of finishing. Those slaloming runs and thunderbolt finishes against Benfica and Inter could be seen as preludes to greatness if he were not already great.
Substitutes
Emi Martínez came up big in Aston Villa’s hugely enjoyable run to the last eight. Denzel Dumfries had five goal involvements in the Inter v Barcelona semi-final. Raphinha and Serhou Guirassy were joint-top for goals, with the Brazilian outstanding for Barcelona, the Guinean a ray of light for a faded Dortmund team. Désiré Doué, scoring two goals in the final, completed PSG’s thrilling attacking trio. - Guardian
