Inspired by tragedy, how Luis Enrique led fearless PSG to the Champions League final

Independent

a day ago

Luis Enrique is getting exasperated but, as usual, there's a wicked smile underneath. It is his first weeks at Paris Saint-Germain, in autumn 2023, and he is trying to introduce the squad to a new approach.
'Chaos,' he shakes his head as yet another star fumbles an instruction. 'At the moment, this is a bit shocking.' Luis Enrique's grand mission statement was to finally impose a modern ideology on PSG, the game-leading 'positional play' of Barcelona. The problem is not just that this jars with 'the French school', to quote PSG's sporting director Luis Campos. It is that it jars with everything that the PSG has been for over a decade.
Throughout all of this, Campos was watching absurd training sessions and actually laughing. He could laugh, however, because he could see what was really happening.
'If we don't win this year, I'm sure we'll win next year,' Campos proclaimed. On Saturday in Munich, Campos could be proved correct. Many would celebrate a PSG victory over Inter Milan, despite the French club's controversial Qatari state ownership. That support is largely down to the manager. In truth, it's also about the manager. It is as if many questions about PSG as a sportswashing project have faded next to a public will for Luis Enrique to do this.
Much of that is down to one moment, that is now poignantly shared when the manager enjoys some glory.
Luis Enrique is sitting at PSG's training ground, and discussing his 'whirlwind, marvellous' young daughter, Xana. In 2019, she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. She sadly passed away a few months later, at the age of nine.
Given that he is a man who is so spiky about everything in football, it would be easy to understand Luis Enrique being angry at the sheer injustice of this. That isn't the case. What is so touching about the scene is that he only looks to the good.
'My daughter came to live with us for nine wonderful years. We have a thousand memories of her. You may ask whether I consider myself fortunate or unfortunate. I consider myself to have been fortunate. Very fortunate.'
One of those memories was from exactly 10 years, and another Champions League final in Germany, as Luis Enrique won his only medal so far with Barcelona in Berlin's Olympiastadion.
'I have an amazing photo of her, planting a Barcelona flag into the turf,' he said in January. 'I want to be able to do the same with a PSG flag. My daughter won't be there in the physical sense but she will be there spiritually, and that's very important to me.'
It suddenly becomes very difficult to begrudge his team victory. This emotional story gained renewed prominence due to the documentary You Have No F****** Idea, from which that scene comes.
There are a few layers to the title, given that it can refer to what Luis Enrique says to people (especially media), what he works through, what he has had to live through and – most importantly – his personality.
It's not all manic energy, as Campos chuckles. You can see why people love Luis Enrique, even as he drives them mad.
The PSG players listen to him now because, in the words of one insider, 'he just doesn't give a f***'. He has no time for the internal star politics of PSG, or the various burdens the squad had felt, such as the fact that Neymar and Kylian Mbappe still hadn't won the Champions League.
Luis Enrique cares not for any of that. A young team consequently plays without fear.
The abrasiveness that has defined Luis Enrique's career is well told, from the courage to leave Real Madrid for Barcelona as a player, to the willingness to face down Lionel Messi as a coach.
What stands out when you see Luis Enrique up close is the emotional honesty that could be heard as he spoke about Xana. He may be manic, but he's genuine.
With one story from his brief time at Roma, Luis Enrique laughed when he saw their breakfast options for the first time: cream-filled cornettos and indulgent cappuccinos. They were gone the next morning. 'The wedding party is over!'
When told of one player who hid a smoking habit, Luis Enrique went to him. 'You won't want a non-smoking room then?' Criticism of a system with four forwards in the 4-1 defeat to Newcastle United then received a customary response. 'The press don't like four forwards because they don't know how to put them in their little pictures. 'There are only three places, how do we arrange them? How do we arrange them?!' Arrange them how they come out of your balls!'
There's even laughter as he remembered what a 'nuisance' a young Pep Guardiola was, giving him and Luis Figo tactical instructions from the line as a sub. And yet Luis Enrique freely talks about how he then followed the Catalan into coaching, and followed his famous ideology.
The pure love for the game is there. He may bark at Ousmane Dembele and roll his eyes at how 's***' his set-pieces are but, when the winger suddenly beats a right-back, Luis Enrique enthuses: 'Marvellous, only Ous can do that for you.'
Luis Enrique is now as sophisticated a coach as you can get, but there's again that humanity. He spends hours poring over analysis, loves data and believes the 'future of football' is a coach monitoring pressing from high in the stands… except, he'd hate it. He wouldn't be able to shout at a player in front of him getting too comfortable in a one-on-one.
This was why Campos and PSG had that belief. They could see how Luis Enrique worked, and what needed to be done with this young team.
One key moment did help. Throughout 2023-24, Luis Enrique constantly talked – with some edge – about how the team always had to work for Mbappe. You can sense the frustration, from a coach who believes in an uncompromising pressing game.
'Kylian never defends… so we have adapted the system so that he runs as little as possible.' And yet, in the dressing room before one game, Luis Enrique exploded and told Mbappe he absolutely had to press the right centre-half.
'This is a match!' he shouted.
'A little bit more normality does no harm,' Luis Enrique said at one point. So, the manager constantly joked at the expense of Mbappe's megastar status. 'Mr Mbappe, right this way!'
What does Mbappe think now? He could join Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Maxwell as the only players to join the reigning European champions, only to see their previous club immediately win the trophy.
It is not luck. Mbappe's departure did more than lighten the mood at PSG. It specifically aided Luis Enrique's ideology.
The entire team now presses. There was a conspicuous comment in the build-up to this final.
'If you analyse our defensive improvements, it is about the way our attackers defend. They do an exceptional job. You can see how many ball recoveries they have. This is one of the concepts which is hardest to instil because attackers have to change their mindset.'
He has changed the thinking about the club. It's really about one man. He'll mostly be thinking about one little girl.