Choupo-Moting and Gnabry seal Bayern’s progress as PSG fall short again

They will, of course, keep trying. Another few signings in the summer, perhaps a new coach, a few tweaks to the project. Certainly Ligue 1 defences can expect a whole new world of punishment next season.

And in a sense, this is simply the mantra of the modern Paris Saint-Germain. Ever bought? Ever failed? No matter. Buy again. Fail again. Fail better. Fail with the two greatest forwards in the world at your disposal. Fail on the counter-attack. Fail by giving it away in your own penalty area and letting Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting tap the ball into an empty net.

Meanwhile, this was one more chance gone for Lionel Messi, for Kylian Mbappé, for Neymar, injured here and perhaps watching on television. It will be of little solace to them, or indeed the club’s Qatari backers, that they competed pretty well for the last half-hour in Paris and the first hour here.

For all the leaders and organisers in this team, it remains a source of bafflement that a team with every resource at its disposal remains so lacking in basic maturity, that a club with 29 trophies in the last decade still looks so ill-equipped to win. Bayern Munich were barely better than competent here. They do not yet look like potential winners of this trophy. And yet over 180 minutes, they knew when to turn up the heat.

Initially at least, this was not so much the fluent, imperial Bayern that had recorded seven wins out of seven in the Champions League but the more hesitant, flabby Bayern that have won four out of eight in the Bundesliga since Christmas and carelessly allowed an actual title race to gestate.

Manuel Neuer has been a big loss, of course, but this alone does not quite explain the tentativeness at the back, the stilted buildup, the occasional spasm of