6.48pm BST
The teams
PSG: Chevalier, Hakimi, Marquinhos, Pacho, Mendes, Zaïre-Emery, Vitinha, Doué, Barcola, Dembélé, Kvaratskhelia.
Tottenham Hotspur: Vicario, Porro, Romero, Danso, Van de Ven, Palhinha, Bentancur, Sarr, Kudus, Rucharlison, Spence.
Referee: João Pinheiro (Portugal).
Updated at 6.56pm BST
6.30pm BST
Preamble
The sashaying, swaggering, record-breaking champions of Europe take on the winners of last year’s distinctly underwhelming Europa League final. That being the case, Paris-Saint Germain, the first side to win a European Cup / Champions League final by five clear goals, are hot favourites in Udine tonight to swat aside a seriously-below-par Tottenham Hotspur who just about got the better of a Manchester United selection plumbing depths adjacent to rock-bottom.
But! However! And yet! PSG might have seen off Manchester City, Liverpool, Aston Villa and Arsenal en route to Champions League glory last season, but they didn’t have it all their own way against the English, and had their shorts freshly laundered, neatly pressed and handed back to them in the Club World Cup final by Chelsea. That will give them pause. Meanwhile nobody ever made good money predicting which Spurs would turn up on any given day, and while they’re coming off the back of a 4-0 humbling by Bayern Munich, they’ve also recently beaten their arch-rivals Arsenal. So pooh-pooh the scattergun irrelevance of pre-season if you must, but this is technically pre-season too, so good luck calling it.
PSG are looking to add a first Super Cup to their fast-expanding resumé. They’ve only contested it once before, in 1996, and will hope to do significantly better this time round, having lost that two-legged tie 9-2 on aggregate to Juventus. Spurs meanwhile are in their very first Super Cup; their previous European wins during the competition’s existence, the Uefa Cups of 1972 and 1984, came during a period where the holders of the Cup Winners’ Cup got to play instead. So we’re breaking new ground tonight one way or the other.
Crystal Palace have just proved that trophies are like proverbial London buses: you wait long enough for one, then another arrives swiftly after. Can Spurs, who slaked their 41-year European thirst just three months ago, do the same? Kick-off at the home of Udinese Calcio is at 8pm UK time, 9pm in Friuli-Venezia Giulia. It’s on!
