Why Champions League finals keep ending 1-0 (2024)

There have been six goals in the past five men’s Champions League finals and each of the past four have finished 1-0. For the most-watched club competition, it is a little strange.

For context, the last sequence this long of 1-0 Champions League or European Cup finals was six between 1978 and 1983. Recent seasons have bucked the trend of the 2010s, where both teams scored in eight finals between 2012 and 2019. Three of those finished 3-1 (2011, 2015, 2018) and two 4-1 (2014, 2017).

Finals are stereotyped as cagey games, with nobody wanting to make errors. Champions League finals are the final competitive game in a season, so players and staff are physically and emotionally drained, even more so if they take place in warm, early-summer evenings on the continent.

However, running performance (distance and intensity) has a “trivial influence” on success in the Champions League according to a 2022 study and longer seasons and more intense matches could equally be argued as a cause for making games more open or high-scoring through errors.

So why are these games so low-scoring?

Not all apply to all the recent finals, but a combination of four broad factors explain the recent low-scoring finals:

• Missed chances and outstanding goalkeeping performances
• Dogmatic coaches prepared to tweak at 1-0 up, and typically defensive/risk-averse coaches
• Rise of opposition analysis and increasingly tailored plans against opposition strengths
• Overrepresentation of English teams

Let’s have a look at how that has played out.

Finals are won in both boxes. The six goals scored in the past five finals have come from 116 shots worth 12.5 expected goals — on average, you would expect twice as many goals to be scored.

Only four out of 19 big chances were converted. These figures are far from the ruthlessness associated with successful knockout teams.

It might be partially variance, but owes also to outstanding goalkeeper performances and coaches preferring (less clinical) false nines and wingers as strikers.

Allison made eight saves in Liverpool’s 2019 Champions League final win over Tottenham Hotspur, then the most by any goalkeeper on Opta’s record (data collection started in 2003-04). Real Madrid’s Thibaut Courtois took that crown three years later, against Liverpool, making nine saves.

Throwback to this iconic Courtois display in the final 🔝@thibautcourtois || #UCL pic.twitter.com/M4qaLwoKz9

— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) May 11, 2023

Recent Champions League finals have acted like a tactical microcosm into European football with the goalscorers and player of the match awards. In four finals between 2019 and 2022, at least one of the finalists started a winger as the central striker or opted for a false nine.

The lack of a box forward to finish crosses was a noticeable problem for City in 2021 (one out of 13 crosses completed) and Paris Saint-Germain in 2020 (one out of 12 crosses completed).

Five player of the match awards have been given to a goalkeeper (Courtois, 2022), a centre-back (Virgil van Dijk, 2019), two defensive midfielders (N’Golo Kante, 2021; Rodri, 2023) and one forward (Kingsley Coman, 2020).

Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp are renowned as emblematically dogmatic head coaches, committed to winning with identity, but even they acknowledge that aesthetics or philosophy become redundant in the biggest game.

“You have to be stable in finals,” said Guardiola ahead of the 2023 final. “Defend well, attack and have control. You have to be patient. The most important thing is thinking it is 0-0 and we are not losing.”

“I played many more finals than I won, we always played better football (than this game),” said Klopp after Liverpool beat Tottenham in 2019. “A final is about the result. I don’t want to explain why we won it, I only want to enjoy it. All the rest is not important,” he added.

In an era of coaches where plan B is usually to do plan A better, there is some humanity to be found in the idea that even for Klopp and Guardiola the Champions League final is too big.

In 2019, Liverpool went ahead inside two minutes against Tottenham, in the peak of their high-pressing style. They saw the game out with (based on passes allowed per defensive action) their most passive defensive display in Europe or domestically since 2018-19.

As much as City have become a passing machine under Guardiola, their 2023 final success evidenced Guardiola’s big-game risk aversion. While they would normally go through or round, City went over Inter’s press.

Goalkeeper Ederson hit almost 55 per cent of his passes long (35+ yards) — only one of seven occasions out of 59 Champions League games since 2018-19 where he has played most of his passes long.

Here is one example, with City in their attacking 3-2-2-3 shape, pushing centre-back John Stones into an advanced position behind Inter’s midfield. Ederson, under little pressure and with five accessible passing options into his three defenders and two defensive midfielders, punts upfield towards Erling Haaland and Stones.

Across the past five finals, there have been as many final-third regains as direct attacks (33). Opta define direct attacks, a proxy of counter-attacking, as possessions starting in a team’s own half with at least 50 per cent forward movement, ending with a shot/touch in the opposition box.

Recent Premier League seasons have seen almost twice as many final-third regains as direct attacks, with most teams’ out-of-possession plan A to press high. In finals, coaches clearly value the safety of a counter-attacking approach, which offers more defensive protection.

“We tried to keep them under pressure and they played on the counter-attack mostly,” said Coman after Bayern Munich beat Paris Saint-Germain in the 2020 (behind closed doors) final. “We didn’t concede a goal and that was the most important thing”. Fittingly, PSG head coach Thomas Tuchel said he was “convinced that if we’d got the first goal, we would have won that same game 1-0”.

Gareth Bale, in 2018, was the last player to score twice in a Champions League final. Such is modern football, firmly in its analytical period, that clubs develop complex plans to mitigate opposition strengths and minimise their superstars.

Ahead of last season’s final and faced with the prospect of defending Haaland, Inter head coach Simone Inzaghi said “(Antonio) Rudiger managed to stop him very well in the semi-final and we’ll try to take our cue from that.” Rudiger is a classic man-marker one-v-one. Inter defended out of their trademark 5-3-2, doubling up with Francesco Acerbi and Alessandro Bastoni, giving them cover if one centre-back wanted to step out.

Across 90 minutes, Haaland put up one shot and two touches in Inter’s box — he has only had fewer touches in an opponent’s box once in 19 other Champions League appearances for City. His only shot, on the angle after escaping pressure from Bastoni, went straight at Andre Onana. The plan worked.

Similarly, there was Guardiola’s 40-second rant about Tuchel’s Chelsea ahead of the 2021 final. He was simultaneously amazed and frustrated by their ability to defend compactly out of a 5-2-3, pressing passes into midfield and condensing space, while staying wide enough to react to switches. Head coaches understanding opponents on those micro and macro tactical levels has become standard, and means they can develop precise, bespoke plans for finals.

“We were a bit surprised, I expected Fernandinho to start. He chose a very offensive line-up,” said Tuchel. It was only who City played, not how they played, that he could not predict.

“Everything else we more or less expected,” said Tuchel. “We expected that they wanted us to pin on the side, very, very wide. So it was very important that we stepped out with Azpi (Cesar Azpilicueta) and Toni (Rudiger) constantly out of the back five to support our midfield”.

Tuchel is notoriously defensive but this was the ultimate example of a shape set up to be nightmarish for City’s No 10s (they played without a recognised No 9). Guardiola’s side ended the game without a big chance and only seven shots, statistically their worst European display since 2018-19.

Globalisation and freedom of player movement means national footballing identities have never been more nebulous, but English teams tend to make for low-scoring Champions League finals.

Consider that, before 2023-24, six of the last 10 Champions League finalists were English sides. There were all-England finals in 2019 (Liverpool vs Tottenham) and 2021 (Chelsea vs City), with 2020 (PSG vs Bayern) the only final not to have English representation.

The last time this many Champions League finals finished 1-0, English teams won five of them: Liverpool, Nottingham Forest twice, Liverpool again then Aston Villa between 1977 and 1982.

It is correlation not causation, rooted in England’s poor historical record in major tournament knockouts and cagey-risk-averse approaches to those games. After all, the last English manager in a Champions League final was Joe fa*gan with Liverpool in 1984 and just 17 of the 110 starters in the past five finals have been English.

Even so, the end of a six-year streak of English representation in the Champions League final, with Real Madrid taking on Borussia Dortmund at Wembley might mean the end of the 1-0 scoreline streak.

Liam Tharme is one of The Athletic’s Football Tactics Writers, primarily covering Premier League and European football. Prior to joining, he studied for degrees in Football Coaching & Management at UCFB Wembley (Undergraduate), and Sports Performance Analysis at the University of Chichester (Postgraduate). Hailing from Cambridge, Liam spent last season as an academy Performance Analyst at a Premier League club, and will look to deliver detailed technical, tactical, and data-informed analysis. Follow Liam on Twitter @LiamTharmeCoach