Paris Saint-Germain have been able to rest key players throughout their domestic campaign, and that could give them the upper hand against Arsenal this weekend in the Champions League final.
A look at the most basic numbers might have you believe that the two Champions League finalists have had equally demanding campaigns.
Saturday’s final in Budapest will be the 63rd game of 2025-26 for Arsenal, and the 56th for Paris Saint-Germain. However, the French side also played seven matches at last summer’s Club World Cup, which means that if you include that tournament, both teams come into this weekend’s games having played 62 matches since the start of last June.
Delving a little deeper, though, there is more to those figures than first meets the eye.
While Arsenal were able to rest properly during last summer’s off-season, PSG were in the USA getting to the final of a competition played in sweltering heat, which started only 14 days after they had won the 2025 Champions League.
They had barely any time off to actually rest after it, either, because their 2025-26 campaign started exactly one month after the Club World Cup had ended, with the European Super Cup. And their defence of the Ligue 1 title began just a few days later, too.
The new version of the Club World Cup wasn’t particularly popular, with plenty of fans experiencing their own version of football fatigue. Many of them would have welcomed their own summer break.
It also set the teams involved up for a difficult season, where their players were forced to play catch-up on their rivals when it came to rest and recuperation.
There’s no way of saying with any certainty that Chelsea’s players were impacted by their run to Club World Cup glory, but it may also be no coincidence that they won only two of their first six league games of the season and went on to finish way down in 10th. Cole Palmer, for one, had a disappointing campaign and won’t even be at this summer’s World Cup as a result.
But since the new season started with August’s Super Cup, there really is no comparison between the demands on PSG’s players and those on Arsenal’s.
From the beginning of the 2025-26 campaign, Arsenal have played more matches than any other team in any of the top five European leagues, having gone deep in the EFL Cup and the FA Cup, too. And, most crucially, their opportunities to rotate have, unlike PSG, been few and far between.
For example, when PSG’s domestic season started against Nantes, their starting lineup contained just two players who had started the Champions League final a couple of months before. The departure of Gianluigi Donnarumma to Manchester City meant one of those starting-lineup changes was unavoidable, but seven of the other eight were selection decisions from manager Luis Enrique, the other forced by a João Neves suspension.
That day against Nantes, with the game goalless, Nuno Mendes, Achraf Hakimi, Ousmane Dembélé, Désiré Doué and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia came off the bench to force a 1-0 win, but that level of reinforcement hasn’t been necessary every week. Far from it, in fact.
Luis Enrique has been able to rest his players entirely from Ligue 1 games regularly. And that means that, despite PSG playing a lot of matches, their most important players have been rotated heavily and, as a result, come into this weekend’s final relatively fresh.
Many of PSG’s best players have played shockingly little domestic football this season. Ballon d’Or winner Dembélé started just 11 of their 34 Ligue 1 games; Neves, Mendes and Fabián Ruiz made 13 starts each; Kvaratskhelia 18, Doué and Hakimi 16, and Marquinhos 11.
And it’s not like they come off the bench all that much, either. Not one of them has played even half the available minutes in Ligue 1 this season.
Paris Saint-Germain squad rotation
Many of them have been saved for the Champions League all season, where Luis Enrique clearly feels they are needed more. Mendes and Marquinhos have actually played more minutes in the Champions League this season than in Ligue 1, despite PSG playing 18 fewer matches in that competition.
And although PSG have had a few injury problems, the above is largely due to rotation. For example, Kvaratskhelia has missed just three league games due to injury, Marquinhos two, Mendes eight, Neves nine and Dembélé 10. They have just been given time off at every opportunity.
And the bulk of their squad is made up of young or peak-age players, who should be able to contend with a packed schedule. Resting Marquinhos regularly might be necessary but many of them have simply been kept fresh for this crucial part of the season.
PSG squad profile
PSG’s superiority in Ligue 1 has allowed Luis Enrique to manage any injuries and prevent fatigue by carefully managing his players’ workloads, simply through rest whenever they’ve needed it. PSG won Ligue 1 for a fifth season in a row this year.
Meanwhile, everyone familiar with the Premier League will know exactly how hard Arsenal have had to work to win the title.
Some of that is due to the trauma of their past failures. Three successive second-place finishes meant Arsenal were desperate to win it this time around and were terrified of throwing their lead away to Manchester City again, and they made hard work of getting the points they needed as they stumbled over the finishing line. Beating relegated Burnley 1-0 at home in their penultimate game was made to look like a mountainous task, for example.
But they also struggled in the final straight at least in part because of how strenuous the season was, and also because, whether rightly or wrongly, manager Mikel Arteta chose not to rotate as much.
Arsenal squad rotation
Despite spending big last summer and boosting the depth of his squad, there were certain players he simply would not rotate. David Raya played every minute in the Premier League this season until the title was won – so he missed the final game – while he has also started 13 of 14 Champions League games, too.
Declan Rice and Martín Zubimendi were as good as undroppable in central midfield, with Rice missing just two Premier League games and Zubimendi none.
38 – Martin Zubimendi is just the second ever player to win the title and play every game in his first season in the Premier League (excluding 1992-93), after Jens Lehmann in 2003-04. Champions. #CRYARS pic.twitter.com/m5JfvAo8pF
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) May 24, 2026
At centre-back, Gabriel Magalhães and William Saliba only missed out on the few occasions they were unavailable.
All five of those Arsenal players started at least 30 Premier League games this season, while no PSG player started more than 27 in Ligue 1.
Across all competitions, meanwhile, that group of Arsenal players have all played more than 4,000 minutes of football this season. The only PSG player to break the 4,000-minute mark is Warren Zaïre-Emery.
PSG and Arsenal Players with more than 3000 minutes played in 2025-26
Across both squads, 12 players have played at least 3,000 minutes of competitive football in 2025-26, and nine of them play for Arsenal. If Jurriën Timber is passed fit, all of them could start in Budapest on Saturday.
Barring injury, getting through just one more match won’t be beyond any of these super-fit players, but the demands of the season could have an impact on which team can last the distance and keep up the intensity their managers demand for the full 90 minutes. That could mean PSG have a decisive advantage.
UEFA Champions League Stats Opta
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