Paul Fennessy

THERE HAVE BEEN countless reasons to dislike football in recent times.

The decision of Fifa to award its Peace Prize to US President Donald Trump is one especially egregious example from many of powerful people hijacking the game for their own self-serving interests.

Even on the pitch this year, there have been some unwelcome developments.

The Premier League has, at times, been a chore to watch.

The most successful team so far and potential winners, Arsenal, have been emblematic of the English top-flight’s increasingly popular conservative tactics.

Despite possessing several talented attacking players, the Gunners have thrived with a defensive, set-piece-oriented game short on thrills and ball-in-play time.

The second Champions League semi-final first leg between Mikel Arteta’s men and another side that invariably favour pragmatism, Atletico Madrid, may well be another slog.

But Tuesday night’s match between PSG and Bayern Munich was a treat from start to finish.

It felt almost like an overdue reward for football fans, who have suffered through endless, mundane, meaningless league-phase fixtures in this competition or countless, forgettable domestic club games with depressingly predictable outcomes.

What made it special was that it was the type of encounter you seldom see these days.

Two relatively well-matched, top-class outfits were going toe-to-toe with unforgettable consequences.

It’s rare to watch a high-stakes game where both sides act as if they are the better team and go for the win.

The recent Man City-Arsenal Premier League encounter, for example, was a fascinating counterpoint. City needed the three points, and the Gunners would have been happy with a draw, so the visitors sat back for most of the contest and allowed their opponents to dictate the play and dominate the game.

This is essentially the trend for 99% of matches now. One team is palpably superior, and the other defends doggedly, while trying to hit their rivals on the counter-attack.

Occasionally, this dynamic will reverse if the weaker team falls behind and needs a goal. But you hardly ever see matches where the two teams are simply going for it, for most of the 90 minutes.

Part of the problem is that in football now, the wealth and best players are increasingly concentrated among a small minority of clubs.

As recently as the 1990s and 2000s, a team like Marseille, Ajax or Porto could spring a surprise and win the Champions League.

In contemporary times, there are at best eight to 10 clubs that can realistically expect to win Europe’s premier club competition every year, and they will almost certainly be one of the elite sides from Spain, Germany, England, France or at a stretch, Italy (Jose Mourinho’s Inter were the last Serie A team to lift the trophy 16 years ago).

Thrilling, tight encounters like PSG-Bayern, where the stakes feel impossibly high, and the action is relentless, were even commonplace in the Champions League group stages not so long ago.

Yet, non-contests are far more prevalent now. 9-3, 8-2, 10-2 and 8-3 have been some of the aggregate scores in the knockout stages this year.

And tonight, purists might justifiably complain that defensively and tactically, both teams were inept.

The ebb and flow of the match was insane. Bayern threatened to blow away PSG as they dominated the early stages, but the visitors then looked like they would be on the end of a mauling after going 5-2 ahead, before the Germans valiantly fought back to keep the tie alive.

It is difficult to recall many fixtures in recent years with these stakes, at this level, where the attacking play was so routinely breathtaking.

The pass from Harry Kane and the control, composure and finish by Luis Diaz for Bayern’s fourth.

The sublime, pinpoint curled finish of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia as PSG equalised and the way the Georgian international consummately dispatched a sweeping attack for his second, set up by  Ousmane Dembélé’s ingenious dummy.

The gloriously deft João Neves header to put his side ahead for the first time, from Dembélé’s impeccably executed corner.

The run by Désiré Doué and the finish from Dembélé for PSG’s fifth. The similarly emphatic way Michael Olise powered home Bayern’s second, demonstrating remarkable footwork and close control in the process.

Even the penalties were more or less perfect, and the missed chances produced several exquisite moments of attacking brilliance, regardless, right up to 19-year-old substitute Senny Mayulu crashing a shot against the woodwork in the tension-filled dying stages.

There are few sights more spectacular than 22 world-class athletes operating at close to the height of their powers with the world watching.

For all the sport’s well-documented ills and unfortunate political connotations (with the state-run reigning European champions a classic case in point), a big football match can occasionally produce moments of aesthetic beauty reminiscent of a great work of art.

And if PSG-Bayern was akin to a bravura piece of classical music, Atletico-Arsenal on Wednesday will surely seem like an industrial techno gig by comparison.