On the knees, out of breath and unmotivated. It was in this spirit that we left Paris Saint-Germain barely a year ago. The exasperation and weariness generated by the helpless elimination in the Champions League in Munich had resulted in a freewheeling end to the season. Unable to reach the round of 16 of the competition for the second consecutive year, the capital club dismissed Christophe Galtier at the end of his first season, making him the most short-lived coach of the Qatari era, replacing him with Luis Enrique.
A big summer cleaning and eleven months later, the same PSG is in the running for an unprecedented quadruple. He has just secured the title of French champion on Sunday April 28, three days before the end of the season, after his draw against Le Havre the day before and OL’s victory against Monaco on Sunday evening.
This early coronation will allow him to fully focus on his last two objectives of the season. The Rouge et Bleu still have to play the final of the Coupe de France, against Lyon at the end of May, and are especially looking forward to facing Borussia Dortmund in the C1 semi-finals on Wednesday. In total, they can end the season with four trophies, the Champions Trophy having already been in their pocket since January.
“It’s a motivation to do something that has never been done in France, to mark the history of the club, of the city and if it can be for the country, so much the better.”
Luis Enrique, PSG coachin press conference before Lorient-PSG
This scenario, Parisian supporters owe it largely to Luis Enrique, author of a real tour de force. Since his arrival on the bench in July, the Spanish coach has launched a new era. He was promised Everest, and the latter changed everything, from the sporting project to the atmosphere around this club usually tormented by a form of irrational pressure. It’s as if PSG have finally learned from some of their mistakes.
An ambitious and identifiable game project
Upon their arrival in 2011, the Qatari investors announced that they were aiming for the Champions League crown within five years. Since then, the wait had become too heavy. It was absolutely necessary to deflate the obsession with the C1. During his first media outings, Luis Enrique always refused to set concrete ambitions. “My goal is that Paris Saint-Germain supporters are proud of their team, that they are proud of what they see on the pitch, that they appreciate the spectacle. And they will appreciate it if they they see effort, work, a team that attacks well and defends well, a team that plays together.”he announced during his first interview on the club website.
The departures of Lionel Messi and Neymar, as disconnected from the public as they are talented, allowed him to deconstruct this sticky image of a team of soloists, while relying on freshly recruited French headliners from Ousmane Dembélé to Randal Kolo Muani, via Bradley Barcola. The Iberian coach returned to simpler things and made a point of putting the collective at the center of the debates. The message was quickly transmitted. Recruit Lucas Hernandez echoed this at the beginning of September on Canal+: “What the coach wants is clear: to be a team, we all attack and we all defend. If you play against a team and you have two or three players who don’t defend, you will have problems”.
“Offensive identity is non-negotiable. If we don’t think we can play offensively, we don’t come, that’s my philosophy.”
Luis Enrique, PSG coachduring his first press conference
In a short time, Luis Enrique put the Parc des Princes in his pocket. On the pitch, the team showed a marked identity with a desire to control the ball and press the opponent. And, in his speech, the child from Gijon always had a word for the supporters. “It’s difficult to be patient with such supporters. They were impressive tonight and I thank them. We disappointed them, it’s a shame”, he apologized in his first match, which ended 0-0 against Lorient. Two weeks later, he “dedicated” the first victory of the season, against Lens.
Thoughtful communication for greater peace of mind
Luis Enrique’s communication is carefully weighed, although often confrontational with journalists. An assumed choice and a legacy of his time on the bench of Barça and the Spanish selection. For example, he has volleyed at a journalist from Free Ligue 1 because of criticism made after PSG’s 3-1 victory in Rennes: “You only see negative things. You are corrosive. You are the most negative in the history of football! One day, we won 4-1 and he told me that we deserved to lose. You don’t understand anything.”
Determined to act as a lightning rod, Luis Enrique is the type to pounce on anything that might resemble an attack against his group. Like PSG, whose relations with the media are tense, the Spaniard views the media buzz as parasitic noise and prefers to engage on Twitch. He has not given any interviews to any French media, but has given several to the site psg.fr. These complacent interviews, where club employees question another, allow the feeding of a fully controlled media story, more attractive for supporters and boosted by the club’s strike force on social networks.
Although he did not make many friends in the press, the Spanish coach was successful in his endeavor. He finally brought serenity to this club which seemed traumatized for life. Relieved of the obligation to win the Champions League, PSG escaped from the “group of death” and above all overthrew FC Barcelona in the quarter-finals after losing the first leg at home. The performance had never been achieved by a French club but Luis Enrique had predicted it in a pre-match press conference. Such confidence is bound to be contagious in a locker room.
Double-locked, this same locker room arouses a lot of curiosity. Luis Enrique never stopped repeating that he “there was no ego” in his group. Despite Kylian Mbappé’s pout when he left during OM-PSG or his tour of the lunar stadium in Monaco, there was never a concrete divide between the two men. We could even see them hugging each other on several occasions, in Barcelona in particular. The only time Luis Enrique dared to express reservations about his star dates back to mid-November, after a hat-trick from Kylian Mbappé in Reims.
Intelligent game time management
“I’m not very happy with Kylian [Mbappé]. I think he can help the team more, in a different way.”, declared the very meticulous Spaniard on the Prime Video set. Once the departure of the prodigy from Bondy leaked to the press, questions about his future multiplied. Luis Enrique never responded. He first pretended not to understand a journalist the day before Real Sociedad-PSG, then he decided to invoke the collective with each question that was a little too individual.
In addition to keeping a concerned Kylian Mbappé (43 goals in 44 games) despite some forced rest, Luis Enrique’s feat is to have succeeded in developing a team that works with and without his gifted player. During its last outing, PSG only took thirty minutes to kill the match in Lyon by leaving some of the starters on the bench. With only one defeat in the first 31 matches of the season in Ligue 1, Paris flew over the championship and took advantage of the weak competition offered to it to enter management mode.
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At the start of the season, Luis Enrique warned that he was counting on “20 starters”. In total, 21 of its players played at least 10 matches, already two more than the previous year, with a month and a half less competition. By distributing playing time, he involved a larger part of his squad and limited the risk of injuries. It is important to note that PSG have had very few muscle injuries this season. Mocked for his trips to the infirmary in Barcelona, Ousmane Dembélé experienced no physical problems. He was available for the last two Ligue 1 matches but Luis Enrique preferred to limit his playing time thinking of the major events to come.
It is with a full squad, with the exception of Presnel Kimpembe and Sergio Rico, who are long-term injured, that he approaches this exciting end of the season. The conditions are almost optimal, whereas patience and indulgence were required last summer. After all, the Parisian club wanted to start from scratch. He could now slip into a form of irrationality if he achieves all his objectives in the year when the first bricks of his new building were to be laid.