In DESTINATION PARIS, through his months-long travels, award-winning soccer journalist and CBS Sports analyst Guillem Balagué offers an exclusive and intimate look at a season in which the competition for the UEFA Champions League, the world’s most prestigious club soccer tournament, returns to its pulsating best. Off the pitch, however, Balagué peels back the curtain for a look into how many of Europe’s elite teams were not only managing radical changes within their clubs but were forced to confront social, economic and political strains within their communities and the continent’s largest armed conflict in decades.
With cameras in tow, Balagué details the season’s biggest stories, from life without Lionel Messi at Barcelona to Real Madrid’s stunning rally to a record 14th title.
Balagué also delves into the responses within European soccer to Russia’s full-scale military invasion of neighboring Ukraine, including UEFA moving the Champions League Final to Paris from St. Petersburg. Balagué carefully brings the audience into these turbulent stories with exclusive interviews. Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk owner Serhiy Palkin and director of football operations Darijo Srna, Real Madrid midfielder Luka Modrić and Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp are among the many interviewees.
On the heels of a season rocked by a global pandemic, the 2021-2022 UEFA Champions League was one shaken by global conflict and violence. Through it all, Balagué, with the help of friends old and new, guides viewers across Europe as its people find ways to persevere and carry on their greatest traditions, culminating with the UEFA Champions League Final in Paris.
