The genius of Luis Enrique


Luis Enrique underlines status as one of all-time greats with masterclass

How Spanish manager turned PSG into new kings of Europe
Coach has proved his genius by moulding largely unstarry group into the champions of Europe for the first time

2 Jun 2025 - The Guardian
David Hytner 

Munich - At what point did Luis Enrique know it was going to work out, that his Paris Saint-Germain team would beat Inter at the Allianz Arena to win the club’s first Champions League title? The manager had certainly cut a confident figure when he emerged on to the pitch 90 minutes before kick-off for a quick temperature check with his coaches.

The PSG ultras were already behind one of the goals, bobbing up and down en masse. They would be a forceful presence throughout. Luis Enrique was aware that an omen was on his side. Every time Munich had hosted a final in Europe’s elite competition, a new champion had emerged. Nottingham Forest, 1979. Marseille, 1993. Borussia Dortmund, 1997. And Chelsea, 2012. Inter had arrived as three-time winners.

Luis Enrique is a spiritual person, so maybe that fed into things. What absolutely did was the shining light he had in the sky. “You will be the star that guides our family,” he wrote in tribute to his daughter Xana in 2019 after she died from bone cancer at the age of nine.

Luis Enrique carries more than the unimaginable pain. He feels enriched by the time he was able to spend with her.

When the game got under way, everything quickly felt just right for PSG. Luis Enrique had declared his side knew “how to unpick teams like Inter”. He believed in his approach, how his players would pass and move, especially the movement – the positional fluidity, the unusual overloads, the press, as well. A 2-0 lead after 20 minutes was fortifying.

The way Luis Enrique would tell it, even at 3-0 midway through the second half he wanted a fourth because the game “could still open up” for Inter. So Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s goal for 4-0 on 73 minutes was probably the moment for the Spanish coach, although he seemed to really let it all out when Senny Mayulu made it five just before the end.

The 19-year-old substitute, who had been on for two minutes, was giddy with joy. For Luis Enrique, it was an example of his Midas touch on the night but also a symbol of something wider in terms of what he has built. An unheralded youngster ought not to be able to do this in club football’s biggest game. It is gloriously possible within Luis Enrique’s collective.

Something felt crystal clear as the PSG captain, Marquinhos, emerged through the golden confetti – detonated a little early – to hoist the trophy; Luis Enrique must now be considered among the all-time greats of his profession.

For him, the glory of Munich added up to a second “classic” treble of his career – league, Champions League, principle domestic cup – having achieved the feat at Barcelona in 2014-15. Only one other manager has done this: his former Barcelona and Spain teammate Pep Guardiola, who pulled it off with Barcelona in 2008-09 and Manchester City in 2022-23. But it has been as much about how Luis Enrique has succeeded at PSG.

It has sometimes been possible to detect a bit of sniffiness about his exploits at Barcelona. You know, he inherited Lionel Messi and Neymar, with Luis Suárez added for him. Sergio Busquets, Andrés Iniesta and Xavi were already there, too.

It has been different at PSG. With the help of Luís Campos, the recruitment chief, Luis Enrique has created a team – and one in the truest sense. Willian Pacho, João Neves and Désiré Doué were brought in last summer, with Kvaratskhelia, the final piece of the puzzle, joining in January.

PSG have spent heavily; £200m on that quartet alone. Everything continues to stem from the wealth of the club’s Qatari owners. Yet Luis Enrique has assembled a largely unstarry group who play for the badge rather than themselves; a break, frankly, from previous PSG vintages. And one capable of hitting such beautifully sweet high notes.

Ousmane Dembélé, who signed in the summer of 2023, which was when Luis Enrique arrived, has scored 33 goals this season. He did not add to the tally against Inter, although he did contribute two assists and was his usual threat. But it was his work without the

ball that had Luis Enrique purring. “Everyone is talking about the Ballon d’Or … I would give it to Dembélé just for his defensive work against Inter,” the manager said. “He showed what he was made of. He was a leader, he was humble.”

Luis Enrique had noted a few weeks back: “The first year at a club is generally not perfect but in the second you grow more in terms of football and confidence.” He called it, he has felt it, the click coming in January when PSG came back from 2-0 down to beat Guardiola’s City 4-2 at the Parc des Princes in the penultimate Champions League group phase game.

Since then, they have ridden the wave past everybody, including Liverpool, Aston Villa and Arsenal, all the way to the crowning moment against Inter. And when it was over, there was the tifo from the PSG ultras. It depicted Luis Enrique and Xana in PSG colours planting a flag in the turf, just as they had done with Barcelona after the 2015 Champions League final victory against Juventus. It was overwhelmingly emotional. Xana can be very proud of her dad.

***

PSG 2.0 set to rule unless stars can be tempted away

Mbappé’s missive from Madrid a reminder to Doué et al that more-storied clubs exist outside France

2 Jun 2025 - The Guardian
Nick Ames 

Munich - As the hundreds of VIP guests at Uefa’s official Champions League final dinner listened attentively, Aleksander Ceferin addressed his audience. It was the night before Paris Saint-Germain eviscerated Inter and, taking the floor before starters were served at Munich’s Paulaner am Nockherberg brewery, he kept his predictions general. “Tomorrow we play the best game a club could play,” he said. “The one who wins tomorrow will be the best club in the world.”

Ceferin’s wording was no accident. The final took place against the context of Uefa’s continuing tensions with Fifa and, most pertinent, the imminent rebirth of the Club World Cup. Whether PSG are the planet’s most becoming football institution may depend on where your moral compass points but, about 26 hours after the Uefa president’s speech, they proved beyond any doubt that their team sit above everyone.

Will this title, which has come well behind the schedule laid out by their Qatari ownership when they took over in 2011, prove a mere ripple in history or could it spark an era of dominance? Has Luis Enrique’s enthralling side simply happened upon a fleeting confluence of time and place, or will they bed in for the long haul? Those questions hung in the air as Parisian heads cleared the next morning, although nobody should expect their demolition job at the Allianz Arena to be a one-off.

Within hours of the full-time whistle, figures close to PSG were pointing out this has been only year one of their spring clean. They sought to draw a line under the decadence that had coloured the club’s modern era, even if their investment in humbler individuals and future-proofed talents has hardly come cheap. This trophy crowns a project and signals the start of one. The new direction has been borne out already and there is no intention of changing course.

There are clear notes of caution. One is PSG’s Champions League campaign was saved by the playoff safety net that gives faltering big guns a second shot in the new format. Even allowing for the fact direct comparisons are wobbly given the previous home-and-away structure no longer holds, it is worth pointing out the seven points they amassed after six games of the league phase would have brought their elimination in previous years.

Their chair, Nasser al-Khelaifi, nominally wearing his European Club Association hat, made this point in his own speech at Paulaner am Nockherberg. His sentiment was it had been far from an easy ride. Even though they were dominant in the knockout phase, helped by spending £60m on Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s ability to add new depth to their attack in January, there had been marginal moments against Liverpool, Aston Villa and Arsenal. Not even a cup competition set up to smooth the favourites’ paths can offer guarantees of sustained supremacy.

Another caveat arrived, perversely, in the form of a well-wisher. “The big day has finally arrived,” Kylian Mbappé wrote on Instagram after taking in his former employers’ win. “Victory and in the style of an entire club. Congratulations, PSG.”

It was magnanimous indeed from a player who is embroiled in a legal battle with PSG over what he claims is almost £50m in unpaid wages. But the fact Mbappé was offering such wholesome sentiments as a Real Madrid player still presents a red flag. While his departure was seen internally as the final big heave towards breaking with past habits, the fact remains he was a star who decided there was one more rung to climb.

Will Désiré Doué, Bradley Barcola, Vitinha or Willian Pacho feel that way one day? PSG remain tied to perceptions that their domestic league offers an insufficient workout; there is also the point that one trophy cannot pull their history and gravitas alongside those of Real Madrid or, should they knock themselves into shape, Bayern Munich and some of the leading English clubs.

The counterpoint is that the mind-boggling depth of their resources, summed up by the fact their wage bill is thought to be around double that of Inter, allows them to accelerate far beyond traditional grandees as an attractive prospect. PSG were simply too richly funded, well coached and tactically liberated for their opponents to cope. Perhaps, in an era where appearances matter more than ever and swathes of elite football sides have become micromanaged to the point of tedium, it is a marriage that makes them the biggest show in town.

Ceferin had hedged his bets regarding the outcome on Saturday but maybe it pays to be bold in guesses after all. A few hours before the final, another leading European football executive sat on a rooftop terrace in Munich and assessed the night’s prospects. PSG would win 6-1, he said, to mirth around the table but keeping a straight face. The spirit of that forecast was to be proved accurate. It may be harder to claim PSG 2.0 are destined to ride off into the sunset, but Ceferin’s carefully chosen words contained a truth that holds for now.

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