In Paris, Luis Enrique built a team without superstars

The two of them are in the video room. The world star and the coach who has had enough. Top scorer Kylian Mbappé, sitting on one of the many black chairs, leaned forward, watching carefully. Head coach Luis Enrique standing opposite him, the upper body threatening over the attacker. Restless, annoyed, coarse.

It is April 2024 and Paris Saint-Germain lost a few days before in the quarterfinals of the Champions League at home from FC Barcelona (2-3). Luis Enrique is disappointed by the performance of his team, so can be seen in a documentary Who made the Spanish media company Movistar about him last season. PSG was lax with pressure, the visitors left plenty of room to build.

That is also Mbappé’s fault, the trainer argues in the video room. He shows the striker, in Paris club top scorer of all time, images of the game. From how Mbappé Stagstaping looks at how a few meters away the central defenders of Barcelona are completely free on the edge of the penalty area. « Catastrophique”, Jeuis enrique judges.

The Spaniard wants his team to play as « a drifted pressure machine » and if one player then renounces, the opponent can easily play out under that pressure. It is a message that Luis Enrique has repeated all season, and that does not seem to be coming at Mbappé. The striker seems mainly concerned with attacks, with dribbles, with goals. « Of course you are a phenomenon, » the coach fits, « but I don’t care. »

At most, the incident takes at most and a half, in a documentary of more than two hours. Yet the meaning of it is not to be missed: the time that superstars were the service in the Parc des Princes is over. After the acquisition by the current Qatarese owner in 2011, PSG got the image of a soulless, money -wing club, who thought he could solve everything with even more money, but always playing a shortage.

Since the arrival of Luis Enrique, in the summer of 2023, PSG has been rapidly getting rid of onsympathic image. Nowadays, the Paris club stands out for the variety of superstars, because of the well -kept football, the unit that the team radiates, an almost insatiable attack perspective. Who is the man behind that transformation, who plays on Saturday with his team in the final of the Champions League against Internazionale?

‘Hautain, arrogant’

On the colossal training complex in Poissy, northwest of Paris, there is a dark blue platform along the edge of the field. When the PSG players go up for tactical exercises, Luis Enrique Martínez García (Gijón, 1970) lets herself hoist the air through the bowl. From a height of four meters he then looks down, can be seen in videos from PSG. In this way the trainer can see all players at a glance, including those on the other side of the field.

He also regularly takes a radio up. His players then wear a small speaker under their shirt. It enables the coach to stop and immediately adjust an exercise in the middle of the game. If possible, he would also coach his players like this during matches: not from the sidelines, but from his office, while in the meantime he analyzes the match images on his computer.

Luis Enrique is the first to admit that he can be a radical trainer. Compelling, demanding, uncompromising. He makes the plans, and his players have to obey. It is not for nothing that one of his great examples as a trainer is Louis van Gaal, whom he experienced as a player at FC Barcelona. « He is always demanding and very strict, but also very sincere, very authentic, » Luis Enrique once said about the Dutchman in a video stream.

His own self -confidence can seem insistibly, knows ‘Lucho’, as his nickname is. Or as his wife Elena says in the documentary: « People often find him arrogant, Hautain, proud. » He doesn’t care much about what others say or think about him. For example, he runs unperturbed laps on his bare feet on the training field on cold mornings, to seek ‘connection with nature’. Since he started it, never had any problems with allergies, he says to the camera.

At the age of 55 he is still fully engaged in his health. Endless the documentary makers portray him sportingly. While his assistants catch up on a European game, the alarm is going on his sports watch. Luis Enrique interrupts them, in the middle of a sentence, and starts pressing on the edge of the table.

His apartment in Paris is full of mats and weights, and on the ceiling he had gymnastics hanged to train. « I am a minimalist, » he grins. « But Elena thinks it is necessary to occasionally put a couch here. »

He was already when he was still playing football in midfield at Barcelona. A player with a boundless bet, ruthless. As a trainer, he now requires that institution. Luis Enrique started as a coach with the second team of Barcelona, ​​together with former teammate Pep Guardiola. Then he left for AS Roma and Celta de Vigo, to return in 2014 as head coach of the club that he likes the most: FC Barcelona.

Under Luis Enrique, Barcelona won even more than under Pep Guardiola

He knows his best years so far, on the foundations that Guardiola left behind. Under Luis Enrique, Barcelona wins even more than under Guardiola, the team scores even more. In his first season he immediately wins the Champions League, the national championship and the Spanish cup, after which he is named the year by players, coaches and journalists that year Best coach of the world.

But just as suddenly, after three years, he stops because he is tired of « the ruthless search for solutions and ways to improve team. » In the following four years he is, with varying success, national coach of the Spanish national team. Maybe he is more of a club trainer, he will say about it later. Because the transfer of his philosophy takes time.

All power

He had never considered PSG until 2023, because he did not believe in the approach to the Qatarese investor QSI. « If you won prizes with the best players, PSG should have had eight Champions Leagues, » he says in the documentary. « They don’t have one. » But when he gets into conversation with people at the club, he notices that in Paris that realization slowly descends and the range of PSG starts.

Luis enrique gets all the space to build from club chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi. The focus on prices was wrong, will admit the investor later. PSG must first become a team, with a clear philosophy, and then the results follow, the new conviction is. At his opening speech of the season warns the owner The group of players: Luis Enrique « has the power to do what he wants. »

The biggest star of all, Lionel Messi, is already gone. He exchanges Paris for Miami. Shortly thereafter also leaves NeymarTo Al Hilal in Saudi Arabia-with 222 million euros to date still the world’s most expensive football transfer. In their place, Luis Enrique, mostly French talents, such as Ousmane Dembélé, Bradley Barcola and (in the current season) Désiré Doué and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.

Of the world stars, only Mbappé remains, the best French football player of his generation. The striker must become the face of the new era, of a team where the pleasure has to stroll. But soon in the first year Luis Enrique notices that Mbappé is not going to be that « cornerstone » of his team.

The Spaniard wants to play with fierce pressure, but the attacker extracts it. And in building, the coach wants to play much less structured. Players sometimes have to be uncomfortably close to each other, all on the same side of the field, to create a surplus. A front left must therefore also be a striker, a striker must be able to collapse until he is right back. While Mbappé mainly sticks to his place in the middle.

A break is therefore inevitable, it turns out the season gradually. And although Luis Enrique constantly expresses himself positively about Mbappé as a person, he judges hard about his attitude as a player. In the end it is Mbappé who bends, and after that first season Moves to Real Madrid. The trainer is laconic under it. « I think we will be even better next year, » he tells the documentary makers.

It is a statement that he will recall at a press conference this spring, after PSG can submit even better figures than in his first season. Enough to beat favorite Liverpool in the eighth finals of the Champions League. Who excelled? Owner Al-Khelaifi must remain guilty afterwards. « I couldn’t tell you. There is only one big star this season: the whole team. »

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