The UEFA Champions League Final Man of the Match award, a symbol of a player’s greatest professional achievement, has developed a chilling reputation. What should be a career highlight has become a harbinger of bad fortune, a curse that now appears to have struck its sixth consecutive victim Paris Saint-Germain’s young star, Désiré Doué.
Doué, who had a phenomenal 2024/2025 season culminating in a masterful performance in the UCL Final scoring two goals and assisting one to help PSG clinch the title, was rightly named the Man of the Match. The 19 year old winger was seen as the face of a new era at the Parisian club, destined for global superstardom.
However, the shadow of the curse soon followed. Just months later, the 20 year old winger was stretchered off in tears during a Ligue 1 match against Lorient. PSG later confirmed that Doué suffered a muscular lesion (tear) in his right thigh against Lorient in the 60th minute, a serious injury that will sideline him for several weeks, causing him to miss key fixtures including a Champions League clash against Bayern Munich.
🚨💔 Heartbreaking for Désiré Doué
— Pitch Wire (@wire_pitch) October 29, 2025
😢 Désiré Doué was forced to leave the pitch in tears during PSG’s match against Lorient.
He had just returned from injury — and now faces another potential setback. Truly heartbreaking for the young star. 💔🙏
Fingers crossed it’s nothing… pic.twitter.com/L2wRbEBUvx
The injury to Doué isn’t an isolated incident, it’s the latest in a disturbing and uncanny pattern that has plagued the UCL Final MOTM winners since 2019. The sheer coincidence has led to widespread speculation about an actual curse.
The recent string of ill fortune began in 2019 with Virgil van Dijk, who was instrumental in Liverpool’s 2-0 victory over Tottenham, earning the MVP award for an excellent defensive display. Just a month after his performance, he was sidelined by an ACL injury, which ended his season. The following year, 2020, saw Kingsley Coman emerge as the hero for Bayern Munich against PSG but he, too, later suffered an ACL injury. In 2021, Chelsea’s midfield engine, N’Golo Kanté, put in a midfield masterclass to defeat Manchester City, he subsequently also suffered a severe injury. The curse struck a goalkeeper in 2022 when Thibaut Courtois made numerous spectacular saves in Real Madrid’s 1-0 win over Liverpool. He was also later sidelined by an ACL injury. In 2023, Rodri scored the only goal and dominated the midfield as Manchester City defeated Inter Milan, but his season was also prematurely ended by an ACL injury. The 2024 winner, Dani Carvajal, who was Man of the Match in Real Madrid’s final victory, also fell victim to an ACL injury.
| Year | MOTM Winner | Injury Suffered Post Final |
| 2019 | Virgil van Dijk | ACL Injury |
| 2020 | Kingsley Coman | ACL Injury |
| 2021 | N’Golo Kanté | Persistent Muscular Injuries |
| 2022 | Thibaut Courtois | ACL Injury |
| 2023 | Rodri | ACL/Severe Muscular Injury |
| 2024 | Dani Carvajal | ACL Injury |
| 2025 | Désiré Doué | Severe Hamstring Injury |
The recurrence of severe injuries among Champions League Final Man of the Match recipients, culminating in Desire Doué’s thigh tear is a stark, high profile illustration of a much larger, systemic problem in modern football the correlation between fixture congestion and increased injury risk. Research consistently shows that a relentless match calendar, characterized by insufficient recovery time, is not merely fatiguing but inherently dangerous. When players are asked to compete in multiple high intensity matches often with only three or fewer days between games, their bodies do not fully recover from the stress and muscle damage caused by the previous game.
This cumulative strain drastically increases the likelihood of non contact, soft tissue injuries precisely the kind of hamstring and ACL issues that have plagued the curse victims, including Doué’s recent severe right thigh muscle lesion. While clubs employ advanced sports science to manage training load and player rotation, the continuous expansion of domestic, continental, and international tournaments creates an unsustainable total workload. Ultimately, the quest for ever increasing match revenue has created a horrible situation for footballers and fans alike.
