Ruud Gullit believes Serge Gnabry’s kick out at PSG star Neymar was the decisive moment in Sunday’s Champions League final and sparked Bayern Munich into life.
The German giants became champions of Europe for the sixth time thanks to a solitary goal from Kingsley Coman in Lisbon, though the match had few chances despite both teams’ prolific scoring records.
Just before Coman’s header, Gnabry sparked something of a melee when he tripped up Neymar, with the former Arsenal man shown a yellow card for his action.
Far from being critical of the cheap shot, two-time European Cup winner Gullit felt it set the tempo for Bayern’s strong second half showing and praised Gnabry for his contribution.
‘The key moment in the game was Gnabry giving Neymar a little kick. That was the key moment,’ Gullit told beIN SPORTS.
‘That was the moment like, “Hey, now we’re going to go for it”. And I loved it when he did that, because that’s what you need.
‘You need a little bit of aggression, you need a little bit of intimidation. And he showed that in that action. And all of a sudden something happened in that team and they scored a goal.’
Speaking to BT Sport after the game, Gnabry himself said: ‘Winning the trophy today is the best thing that could happen to us. We worked incredibly hard and in the end it came through to be the best team in Europe.
‘It’s the final, Paris came out wanting to win and so did we. Nobody is going to give up easily but we came through.
‘As long as it was 0-0, it was always going to be open for us. Of course, they were going to have chances. It was lucky they didn’t score and lucky we did score.’
