Club World Cup team guide – Paris Saint-Germain: The breathtaking yet complicated champions of Europe

New York Times

2 days ago

What do you get when you cross a free-spending, state-sponsored instrument of geopolitical power and a football team whose youth, verve and precision cannot help but set the heart racing? The answer, of course, is 2025-issue Paris Saint-Germain.
On the pitch, there is a huge amount to admire, maybe even love about the newly crowned champions of Europe. The context, though — Qatari money, football club as luxury lifestyle brand — is much less appealing. Now the mixed-feeling roadshow heads stateside for a crack at something resembling global domination.
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Unbelievably good. The French league isn't much of a litmus test — they won that in 2024-25, as they have in 11 of the last 13 seasons — but their performances in the Champions League left little room for doubt that they are the best team in Europe by a distance.
They thoroughly outplayed Premier League champions Liverpool, put four past Manchester City and made light work of Arsenal. Then, in the final, they made Inter look like a bunch of amateurs, pummelling them with such relentlessness that just watching it felt borderline immoral.
Oh, and here's the kicker: most of the players are barely past school age, so the feeling is that this is only the start.
By cruising to Champions League glory? No, that came later.
In fact, PSG qualified for the World Cup back in December, as the — glamour alert — second-best ranked eligible team in the UEFA four-year ranking. Stick that on a scarf at your earliest convenience.
PSG line up in a 4-3-3 formation. In most matches, there is no fixed point in attack. Ousmane Dembele might start centrally but he drifts deep and wide, sometimes swapping positions with one of the wingers. The press is ferocious and coordinated. The midfield, anchored by Vitinha, provides stability and control. Both full-backs have the licence to get forward, although speed merchant Achraf Hakimi is usually the more influential in the final third.
The XI that started the Champions League final is probably their best, although Bradley Barcola — a lovely, flowing dribbler — is an A-grade option on the wing. When a bit more physicality is needed, Goncalo Ramos is another alternative up front.
A few months ago, there was a sense that Luis Enrique was still a little underappreciated. He won the treble with Barcelona in the 2014-15 season but many painted that as an aftershock of the Pep Guardiola era. His Spain side were seductive but did not win anything.
Now, though? The consensus view is that his work in Paris has put him on the highest rung of the coaching ladder. This season's achievements have underlined his qualities: his tactical acumen, his man management, his energy, his ability to convince players that the collective comes before the individual.
Then there is his personality and the forces that have shaped it. Luis Enrique's youngest daughter died from bone cancer in 2019; the grace and determination that he has displayed in the years since have rightly made him a hugely popular figure at PSG and beyond.
You could make a strong case for Dembele here, but the man who really makes PSG tick is Vitinha. He may not be the most showy or the most physically impressive — he's practically begging to be relieved of his lunch money — but his ability to set the tempo of a match is second to none.
The 25-year-old is one of those players who appears to have a bird's-eye view of the match. He manipulates space, manages it. He never gets flustered. He plays one-touch passes but he also puts his foot on the ball, recycles it, allows an attack to breathe.
Pick any PSG goal you'd care to. Rewind the tape. There he is, tap-tap-tap, moving the chess pieces into place.
Signed for an initial €50million (£42m; $57m) from Rennes last August, Desire Doue spent the first half of the 2024-25 season on the fringes of the side, usually coming on as an impact substitute. When Khvicha Kvaratskhelia arrived in January, it appeared the youngster would have to get even more comfortable on the bench at the Parc des Princes.
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Doue clearly had other plans. He was sensational after the turn of the year, clawing his way into Luis Enrique's starting XI and never letting up, eventually producing a gala display in the Champions League final. It was a performance that summed him up, bursting with skill and vivacity but also maturity; witness his cold-blooded assist for Hakimi's opening goal when he would have been forgiven for shooting himself.
What catches your eye with Doue is his all-round game. He can beat a man with trickery or with a turn of pace. He shoots explosively from range. He can thread the needle with a pass but he also knows when to keep it simple. He presses like a demon. He is also just 20. The potential is scary.
Brilliantly, PSG fans have a chant to the tune of Scotland's national anthem. All together now:
Oh, City of Light, feel the warmth of our hearts.
Do you see our passion when we walk close to you?
In this conquest, to drive out the enemy,
So that our colours shine again.
PSG are unusual among the major European clubs in not having significant competition in their own city — albeit the rise of Paris FC, who earned promotion to Ligue 1 this season, may change things slightly. Historically, their biggest rivals have always been Marseille.
To say that there is no love lost between the two sides would be to underplay the depth of feeling here. On one level, it transcends sport and strays into the territory of north-south stereotypes (Parisians cast as haughty aristocrats, Marseille's citizens as corrupt layabouts) but football has added a few layers of its own, not least with a catalogue of violent incidents between the two sets of fans over the years.
For three seasons after their founding in 1970, PSG played in red jerseys. Only in 1974 did they adopt what we now think of as their classic strip — predominantly blue with a wide red vertical stripe down the middle. That kit was designed by Daniel Hechter, a fashion designer who served as PSG president between 1974 and 1978, and was supposedly inspired by that worn by Johan Cruyff's Ajax.
PSG moved away from 'the Hechter shirt' in 2021, a move that prompted protests. 'Respect our colours, respect our history,' ran one campaign by fan group Collectif Ultras Paris, who called on supporters to boycott the new kit.
They play thrilling football. The players are hungry, committed and unselfish. Luis Enrique is one of the good guys.
Again, though, we must always bear in mind that this team also represents something much bigger: state money, state power, state strategy. Your ability to enjoy the team will depend on your ability to compartmentalise.
(All kick-offs ET/BST)
(Top photos: Aurelien Meunier/Eurasia Sport Image/Getty; design: Kelsea Petersen/The Athletic)