PSG the antidote to cautious over-coaching that made Premier League duller

Telegraph

2 days ago

The image of the night – a recurring image – during Paris St-Germain's demolition of Inter Milan in the Champions League final was provided by one of the players who did not score in the 5-0 victory.
It was Ousmane Dembélé who adopted a starting position every time Inter took a goal-kick on the edge of their penalty area that was akin to a sprinter ready to spring from the blocks.
When the ball was played, Dembélé propelled himself forward to set the press and close down the opposition for the most exciting, creative team in the world at present.
🚨 Special camera from the Champions League final
Watch how Ousmane Dembele was pressing Watch the horror in Sommer's eyes.
Enrique said : Is there a player in the world who presses better than Ousmane Dembele?
What a beast that never stops running 🤯 pic.twitter.com/KFVnWkEOlF
— KinG £ (@xKGx__) June 1, 2025
Dembélé's incredible work-rate, allied to his skill and teamwork, is all the more impressive because earlier this season he was dropped from the PSG squad – for the Champions League group game away to Arsenal, which was lost – because of a fall-out with head coach Luis Enrique who did not like his attitude. Dembélé was just not doing what the Spaniard wanted.
Now the 28-year-old France international is probably the favourite to win the Ballon d'Or.
What a transformation and what a transformation of PSG's football by the demanding Enrique.
PSG play football for the new era. They are the antidote to the safety-first, over-coached approach that has unfortunately crept into the Premier League and that involves too many managers wanting to copy Pep Guardiola. Without being able to reach those standards. Even Guardiola has fallen short of them.
Cole Palmer was revealing as he turned match-winner in Chelsea's Europa Conference League triumph. The England international admitted he had grown bored with having to play the ball sideways and backwards – presumably under instruction from Enzo Maresca – and decided to grab the game by the scruff of the neck with two brilliant assists.
Where Jose Mourinho and Rafael Benítez, with their defensive-first approach, helped define the football of the early 2000s and then Guardiola did so for the next decade with a progressive, possession-based approach, so Enrique's PSG has shown Europe the way forward now.
With honourable exceptions such as Liverpool, Newcastle United and smaller clubs such as Bournemouth, too many Premier League clubs are guilty of possession for possession's sake and appear to believe keeping the ball is more important than risking losing it by trying to score.
How many times have we seen the ball played from right to left and back again, obviously and understandably probing for space, only a winger to be picked out. And what do they do? Stop, turn, check back and play a pass infield. Just take on your marker! Run into the space ahead of you! Make the opposition commit! Take a risk!
The coaching approach of many managers – obsessed with statistics and expected goals – has not helped. Take Arsenal's Mikel Arteta, who argued all the data suggested his team deserved to beat PSG in the semi-finals. But anyone who watched the game would have concluded otherwise.
To an extent it has become paralysis by analysis and although no one analyses the game more than Enrique – who often stands high up on a scaffold so he gets an overview of training – he also demands far more bravery and positivity in how his players do attack. Right-back Achraf Hakimi even pops up on the left wing.
Quarter-final goal ✅
Semi-final goal ✅
Final goal ✅
Achraf Hakimi gives PSG an early lead in the Champions League final, but refuses to celebrate against his former side Inter ⚽
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Punditry does not help. Some of it is excellent. Gary Neville is along the right lines when he talks about teams being 'micro-managed'. But then the same players are micro-analysed on television and any mistake is seized upon, with replay after replay and touchscreens and some pretty damning comments. It adds to the growing sense of wanting to be risk-averse.
"That's not a Premier League game of football."
Gary Neville explains why he's disappointed after the Manchester derby. pic.twitter.com/6PZQpa6s9F
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) April 6, 2025
Which brings us back to what PSG do and how they can provide a template. First of all, it requires a huge amount of energy and buy-in with the 10 outfield players asked to counter-press and man-mark all over the pitch – a bit like Andoni Iraola's Bournemouth. It probably also needs a team of athletic, technically superb youngsters, which PSG have assembled.
Dembélé sets that press, effectively, by being a 'false' nine who harries the opposition but also has licence to interchange with the two wingers, who make up the front three in the fluid, 4-3-3 formation.
Crucially, though, those wingers stay wide. The demand is that they go high and run at, or beyond, their full-backs. That is where the real threat lies, not coming back inside where the pitch is more congested.
It helps to have wingers of the quality and game intelligence of Désiré Doué, the man of the match in the final, and Bradley Barcola, who started the season ahead of Doué but replaced him off the bench against Inter.
And then there is Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, whose arrival from Napoli in the January window lit the red-and-blue touch paper. The Georgian is the most swashbuckling and charismatic winger in world football and, like Doué and Barcola, works prodigiously hard.
Another of the images from Munich was Kvaratskhelia sprinting back to tackle an Inter player deep in his own half even though the game was won. He celebrated as if he had scored. And then went down the other end and scored.
It is also risky. PSG lost the ball several times in dangerous positions and Inter were unable to capitalise, partly through some great defending, but also because of their shortcomings.
Yes, PSG are effectively a state-owned and were assembled at enormous cost. They still have a vast wage bill, despite moving on from the galacticos of Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé.
That is a valid argument and should not be overlooked but neither should the football they play and just how entertaining they are at a time when there is genuine concern over the direction in which the sport is heading at the highest level.
Both those thoughts can co-exist and other clubs have also spent heavily without coming close to achieving such a return.
On the night, PSG's brilliance was highlighted even more by Inter's far more rigid, essentially conservative, 3-5-2 approach, with set-pieces providing their best hope of scoring. This is not the sort of football we want, surely? Enrique has shown the way, as Guardiola did, and it is up to other coaches – including Guardiola – to respond. Football will be the better for it.