PSG and Bayern's 5-4 thriller points to a new era of high-scoring soccer

MANCHESTER, England (AP) — It was possibly the wildest match in Champions League history and may just change some long-held perceptions about soccer.

Paris Saint-Germain's 5-4 win over Bayern Munich on Tuesday felt more like an NBA game than a traditional soccer match and set new goalscoring records for the sport's biggest club tournament.

And it might not be just a one-off. The thrilling first leg of the semifinals in Paris points toward a growing trend as some coaches embrace a high-risk, high-reward strategy that is leaving fans breathless.

PSG coach Luis Enrique summed it up perfectly, telling French broadcaster Canal+ that "we deserved to win, but we also deserved a draw, and we would have even deserved to lose, because this game was that incredible.”

Despite being the world's most popular sport, soccer has been criticized, in the United States in particular, because of the low-scoring nature of games, which can result in single-goal victories or even goalless ties over 90 minutes of play.

Compare that to the high octane, high-scoring NBA or NFL and it is understandable why soccer has taken time to fully grab the attention of U.S. fans.

But Champions League holder PSG is at the vanguard of soccer's new entertainers, with Luis Enrique an uncompromising coach, determined to reach new levels of excitement in his pursuit of dominance.

PSG became champion of Europe for the first time last year by beating Inter Milan 5-0 in the final in one of the most spectacular performances in the tournament's history. It completed a trophy treble for the French club, which also won its national league title and cup last season.

Luis Enrique also won the Champions League with Barcelona in 2015 and on Tuesday became the fastest coach to record 50 victories in the competitions — proving his all-action approach is working.

It is no surprise then that his methods are being echoed elsewhere. Not least by Bayern, which has blazed a trail through the Champions League this term under Vincent Kompany and already clinched the German title.

PSG, with 43 goals, is the highest-scoring team in the Champions League this season. Bayern is second with 42.

Tuesday's nine-goal thriller was the highest-scoring semifinal in the history of the competition and neither club is talking about changing its approach for the second leg in Munich next week.

“I asked my staff how many goals we think we’ll have to score, and we agreed on three,” said Luis Enrique. "We’ll show the same mentality. We’ll be going to win the match.”

PSG's Ballon d'Or winner Ousmane Dembele is also ready for another high-scoring affair.

“We won’t change our philosophy. We want to attack and so do they, so I think a great game is in the offing,” Dembele told Canal+.

Kompany, who was a serial title-winning defender for Manchester City in his playing days, is showing his offensive flair as a coach.

“It’s one thing to look at the goals conceded — normally, five goals away from home in a Champions League semi-final, you’re out,” he told Amazon Prime. "But if you look at the chances we created, we could have scored more. And that has to give us belief.”

Soccer has always involved contrasting styles of attack and defense. Brazil has traditionally been a team that embraces the individual flair of its players. Italy has been more defensive and has nullified opponents' attacking strengths.

Two-time Champions League-winning coach Jose Mourinho has taken a more pragmatic approach to winning the competition — shutting opponents down with well-organized and powerful teams. Pep Guardiola, by contrast, has tried to dominate games with the ball and has won Europe's top prize on three occasions. That approach has sometimes been used to criticize him when, despite having some of the best players in the world at Man City, he has often fallen short in the Champions League.

It is refreshing to hear both Luis Enrique and Kompany accept the dangers associated with their all-out attacking soccer.

“It’s my job to accept nothing but perfection," said Kompany. "There was a part of the match that was inevitable, and that was the risks that we were both willing to take.”

Higher scoring games are the trend in the Champions League. This season there is an average of well over three goals a game (3.51).

That is above last season's 3.27, which was the previous highest average.

Each of the last five seasons feature in the top seven high-scoring Champions League campaigns, pointing to a clear trend toward more attacking soccer since the turn of the decade. In only one of those years did the average drop below three goals a game — in 2022-23 when it dipped to 2.98.

The European Cup was rebranded as the Champions League in 1992. During the 1990s the average goals per game was 2.69 and that figure dropped to 2.59 from 2000-10.

It rose to just under three goals a game (2.95) from 2010-20 and so far this decade the average is three goals a game, with teams loading their lineups with attacking talent.

PSG is led by Dembele, who is flanked by brilliant wingers like Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Desire Doue.

Bayern has England captain Harry Kane, who took his season's tally to 59 goals in 51 appearances for club and country this season when opening the scoring on Tuesday. The German giant has also paid big money for France star Michael Olise and Colombia forward Luis Diaz. Both also scored at the Parc des Princes.

Barcelona is another leading proponent of thrill-first soccer, and features the spectacular Spanish teenager Lamine Yamal, Brazil winger Raphinha and goal-scoring icon Robert Lewandowski. But its German coach Hansi Flick has been criticized for being too open in Europe — most notably by losing 7-6 on aggregate to Inter Milan in last year's semifinals.

The good news for fans next week is that PSG and Bayern seem determined to stick to their attacking principles, which should serve up another thrilling clash.

“The game there will be the same game — a crazy game between two teams that want to win and score. We need to go there with the same mentality, the same personality, so we can do an amazing job there like we did here,” PSG captain Marquinhos said.

James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

PSG's Ousmane Dembele celebrates after scoring his side's third goal during a Champions League semifinal, first leg, soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich in Paris, Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

PSG fans light flares on the stands during a Champions League semifinal, first leg, soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich in Paris, Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

Bayern's Michael Olise celebrates after scoring his side's second goal during the Champions League semifinal first leg soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich in Paris, Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

PSG's Khvicha Kvaratskhelia celebrates after scoring his side's fourth goal during the Champions League semifinal first leg soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich in Paris, Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Bayern's Harry Kane celebrates after scoring a penalty, the opening goal of his team during the Champions League semifinal first leg soccer match between Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich in Paris, Tuesday, April 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Want to see the Liberty Bell this semi-quincentennial but don’t have the time or cheese for a pilgrimage to Philadelphia? Have no fear: Chances are, there’s one at a state Capitol, museum or even a fire station near you.

It won’t be the original, but it’ll be a dead ringer.

For a savings bond drive in 1950, the Treasury Department commissioned copies of the famously broken bell, one for each U.S. state and several territories. Except for the serial numbers, they were faithful replicas — right down to the Pass and Stow trademark and a faux crack.

There’s a small but growing group of “bell hunters” who’ve dedicated themselves to visiting as many of the replicas as possible. If they were a gang, Tom Campbell would be the ringleader.

“It was a casual thing that turned into an obsession,” Campbell, a graphic designer, said.

Although Fort Collins, Colorado, is now his home, Campbell was born and raised in Philadelphia and visited the original Liberty Bell as a boy.

Ordered for the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall, the bell cracked on its first test ring in the 1750s, was melted down and cast anew. There’s no evidence it was even rung on July 4, 1776; abolitionists rechristened it in the 1830s for the Bible verse encircling its crown, “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof.”

No one knows exactly when or how the bell cracked again, but the last major attempt to restore it to ringing condition was in the 1840s.

Campbell didn’t know about the replicas until he moved to Denver in the late 1990s.

“I was wandering around, meeting a friend at a bar for a drink, and cut across the Capitol lawn and saw a full-size Liberty Bell sitting there,” he recalled. He read about the bond drive on a small bronze plaque, and a quest was born.

As Campbell and his wife, Dawn Putney, traveled the country, they began building bell trips into their itinerary. One day, she surprised him with his own website: tomlovesthelibertybell.com

“It was just a kind of a fun goof,” he said.

But three decades after he stumbled on that first bell, Campbell has become the go-to expert on these pieces of Americana.

The replicas were cast by the Paccard Foundry, run by a family who've been making bells in southeastern France since 1796.

They weigh the same as the original — 2,080 pounds (944 kilograms) — but differ from the OG bell in one very important respect: metallurgical makeup.

According to the National Park Service, the original was 70% copper, 25% tin and “small amounts of lead, gold, arsenic, silver, and zinc.” In a bell, those other metals amount to “impurities,” said Anne Paccard, the foundry’s communications director and chief for “art of sound” projects, like sculptures that feature bells.

“I must say that the original Liberty Bell is a very poor quality bell, metallurgically speaking,” she told The Associated Press in a recent email. “The bells we delivered in 1950 are made of a specific alloy of bronze called ‘airain’: 78% copper, 22% tin, nothing else.”

The Treasury bells toured the country on the backs of flatbed Ford trucks equipped with loudspeakers and festooned with red-white-and-blue banners.

“You could buy a savings bond, ring the Liberty Bell, have a party,” Campbell said.

At drive’s end, Treasury gifted the bells to the 48 states and the then-territories of Alaska, Hawaii, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. The District of Columbia and the Treasury Department each got one as well. (Three others went to Tokyo, a church in Paccard’s hometown and the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri, giving that state two bells.)

Trouble is, they came with no guidance and no funds to preserve them.

“A local or state historian described it to me as an 'unaccessioned artifact,’” Campbell said. “Not every state wanted them necessarily, and not every state knew what to do with them.”

Virginia held a contest, and the people voted to send the bell to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. It later went into a storage shed until finally finding a home outside a local fire station.

More than half have spent most of their lives outdoors. Time, neglect and exposure to the elements have taken their toll.

Some of the painted-on cracks have faded or disappeared completely. Others bells are displayed without their clappers and/or yokes, or in steel frames that prevent them being rung.

“At that point, it really transitions to more of a monument than a functional bell,” Campbell said. “And, to me, that’s kind of sad.”

But as the nation prepares to celebrate 250 years of liberty, some of those orphan bells are getting a new life.

Kansas’ bell languished, disassembled, for years in a Capitol parking garage until state Sen. Elaine Bowers got involved. In October, the reassembled bell — resting on a heated concrete pad and supported by a custom-made wooden yoke, but still sans clapper — was given a place of honor outside the new Docking State Office Building.

“It just belongs here,” said a beaming Bowers as she stood beside bell No. 21. “It’s a fascinating piece of artwork, but also history that we all should be proud of.”

The Alabama and Idaho bells were shipped to the Bell Foundry Christoph in Charleston, South Carolina, for restoration and are expected to be home in time for the Fourth. Several other bells have also received recent touchups.

Campbell doesn’t set out to guilt states into fixing up and displaying their bells. But if his website happens to nudge them a bit, “maybe I’ll take a little credit for that.”

He’s also helped inspire a new generation of bell hunters.

By age 4, Zoe Murphy of Morris County, New Jersey, knew all the state capitals and their flags. At 5, she saw her first replica in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Now a 14-year-old high school freshman, she has her own website zlovesamerica.com. She’s visited 39 of the bells over the years, from Alabama to Wyoming and even far-off Alaska.

Zoe says traveling the country has given her a deeper appreciation for America’s “collective mix of people and our culture.”

Meanwhile, Campbell's recent visit to Arizona’s newly restored bell — which was touring the state, complete with a rope for the tugging — brought his toll up to 40. Why does the Liberty Bell resonate with him?

“The fact that a cracked bell is the symbol of the United States is really the perfect symbol of an imperfect union,” he said.

Try as they might, it’ll be nearly impossible for these Liberty Bell fans to check all the replicas off their list. Three replicas remain totally unavailable to the public this anniversary year, as far as Campbell can tell. Ironically, one of them is Pennsylvania’s.

For many years, the Treasury bell was the centerpiece of a museum in the former Zion’s Reformed Church of Allentown, where the original was briefly hidden to prevent the British redcoats from melting it down for munitions. But the building changed hands in 2023, and the bell is no longer accessible to the general public while the church is being renovated. (Local officials are placing a lighter, taller replica in front of the church for the anniversary.)

Last June, North Carolina’s bell was hoisted from its spot across from the Legislative Building in Raleigh amid a multiyear renovation of the state history museum. When the AP asked to see it, the request was politely denied.

“Our Liberty Bell is in a secure storage facility,” spokeswoman Mary Huntley said.

The only replica that's truly lost is the one sent to Washington, D.C., which went missing from storage in the early 1980s. Campbell suspects it’s long since been melted down.

“That’s 2,080 pounds of bronze,” he says. “So, that has a scrap value.”

But if anyone has information about the capital bell, feel free to give Campbell a ring.

Associated Press writer John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; and video journalists Thomas Peipert in Fort Collins, Colorado; and Ted Shaffrey in Mount Olive, New Jersey, contributed to this report.

Tom Campbell, who is trying to visit as many replica Liberty Bells in the United States as possible, poses for a portrait at his home in Fort Collins, Colo., April 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Thomas Peipert)

A person walks by a Liberty Bell replica at the Oregon state Capitol on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, in Salem, Ore. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane)

FILE - Romer Derr rings a replica of the Liberty Bell outside the Federal Building 49 times, signifying Alaska's joining the United States as the 49th state, on July 1, 1958, in Juneau, Alaska. Behind Derr holding the Alaska flag, left, is Judy Findlay and holding the U.S. flag, right, is Marilee Nowacki. (AP Photo/JK, File)