PSG, Madjo and the limited lessons of Salzburg

The danger at this point in the calendar is always to read too much into everything. It’s only a year ago that Tottenham were outplaying Paris Saint-Germain in the Uefa Super Cup final, before conceding two late goals and being beaten on penalties. Even if PSG were still in the early stages of their preparation for the new season having played in the Club World Cup, Thomas Frank had drawn from Spurs their best performance in months and there seemed every reason for optimism.

That, of course, quickly turned sour for Frank and Tottenham, while the flaws that seemed apparent at PSG had disappeared by the time they retained the Champions League in May. So there should be a degree of caution about any conclusions drawn from PSG’s 2-1 win over Aston Villa in Wednesday’s Uefa Super Cup in Salzburg.

PSG clearly are behind Villa in terms of preparation of the new season. They were disjointed, clicking only in moments, but with players like Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Desiré Doué they were still good enough to win. Somebody, sometime, might work out how to stop Kvaratskhelia scoring is classic goal, but they haven’t yet; he’s becoming a little like peak Arjen Robben in that everybody knows what he’s about to do but is completely unable to prevent him doing it.

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The biggest concern remains over Matvey Safonov, who still looks an uncomfortable fit in goal. PSG have signed the 18-year-old Italian Alessandro Longoni and seem close to landing the highly rated Japan international Zion Suzuki from Parma. At the moment the plan seems to be to loan Suzuki to Juventus, although Luis Enrique has made clear he would rather have Suzuki in Paris to challenge Safonov with Lucas Chevalier, who joined last summer, making way.

Villa’s team had a slight pre-season air, featuring two teenagers who have never started a league game for them. George Hemmings showed promise on the left but it was the 17-year-old Luxembourg international striker Brian Madjo who really caught the eye. He is physically dominant, remarkably so for somebody so young, but his movement and capacity to find space also impressed. And, while he missed a number of chances – one headed effort from a John McGinn cross might have haunted him – he also took his goal exceptionally well, steering in a volley despite the presence of William Pacho.

Madjo is the son of the Cameroonian forward Guy Madjo, who had an itinerant career in the English lower leagues. He ended up on the youth books of the Luxembourgish sides Marisca Mersch and Racing Union before moving to France with Metz in 2023. Villa, seemingly prompted into action by the interest of PSG, signed him for £11m in January, but it wasn’t clear whether they could do so, given the ban on the international transfers of Under-18s. Fifa subsequently ruled that Madjo, having been born in Enfield, counted as English and that the transfer was legal. He had played three times for Luxembourg’s senior side in the first half of 2025, but was then called up to the Engand Under-17 team last August, scoring against Venezuela on his debut.

He is very young, but on the evidence of his 71 minutes on Wednesday, there’s no reason why he can’t become a semi-regular for Villa this season, a muscular option to complement Ollie Watkins and Tammy Abraham, and the new signing Johan Manzambi. Given the experiments with Donyell Malen, Evann Guessand, Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio, forward options are clearly an area where Villa have been looking to improve over the oast couple of seasons.

Matty Cash will probably be frustrated he was slow to push up in the build-up to the second PSG goal, playing Doué onside, but generally speaking there was much to encourage Villa. Certainly a repeat of last season, when they failed to win a game until September 25 seems unlikely.

As an event, the Super Cup final feels increasingly like an anachronism. This is not the 80s when the Uefa Cup winners might legitimately claim to be a stronger side than the European Cup winners. Even the stadiums used are deliberately low-key: Salzburg follows Udine, Warsaw, Athens, Helsinki and Belfast. In many ways that’s a positive, given how few cities can now host the Champions League final; it’s good that landmark games are spread around.

It’s not even the gala event it used to be when it was played in Monaco on a Friday night after the Champions League group stage draw, although this year’s was notable as summit for European football chiefs as they continue their efforts to outs Gianni Infantino. The head of CAF, Patrice Motsepe, was also in attendance, as was the head of the Moroccan football federation Fouzi Lekjaa, one of Africa’s most influential football officials. The results of their discussions will no doubt become more apparent in the days and weeks to come.

And there was a talking point too in the referee, the game being officiated by Omar Artan, the Somalian referee who was denied entry to the US for the World Cup. His appointment was surely intended not just as trolling of Fifa but as a gesture to Africa, whose confederation has backed Infantino, that Europe is willing to do business, while highlighting that Infantino is not such a champion of the global south as he claims.

If history does recall this game, it will be in that context, but both sides will probably see it as a useful pre-season outing.