What Luis Enrique Knew That Paris Saint-Germain Never Did

Ahead of the club’s appearance in the Champions League final, a clip of Luis Enrique being interviewed at Paris Saint-Germain’s training ground began circulating on social media.

Titled ‘Is This the mindset PSG were lacking all this time?’, it features the Spaniard addressing the camera in his trademark blunt style.

“One of the messages we’ve been trying to instil for many years now is: none of you are special,” he says over a montage of players training.

“If someone has made you believe that they are misleading you, they are fooling you.

“Because the moment you retire, you’ll stop being ‘special.’ Truly special people are those who save lives or dedicate their entire lives to helping others. That’s not us.

“We’re just very fortunate people with a skill that happens to be paid very well. If we were playing table tennis we wouldn’t even get noticed. We’d be walking, taking the bus or riding bikes and nobody would look at us twice.

“Man, how lucky we are to be good at something that pays well?”

The logic of the title is hard to argue with. Before Enrique’s arrival, PSG was the epitome of a club with ‘special’ stars.

For a long time, being considered a star was a prerequisite for recruitment by the French champions.

The problem was, as the title also suggested, it just didn’t work at the highest level and against those with a stronger team ethos, PSG frequently fell flat.

There are few better examples than the two years Paris Saint-Germain spent with the best individual forward line in world soccer: Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe, and Neymar Jr.

Those three stars sparkled together but made the overall team weaker defensively and affected cohesion.

Taking to the field with three of the best players in the world, the Parisians never got further than the last 16 of the Champions League and, in truth, never looked like doing better.

When the final of those three Galácticos, Kylian Mbappe, departed last summer to Real Madrid manager Luis Enrique sounded excited to dispense with the locker room’s biggest ego.

“Yes, there’s a star, a star that shines more brightly than anything else, that is the team. That is the star, the team,” he said.

“It’s amazing. It is a feeling that I try to instil in my players. You see it on the pitch, one for all and all for one, like the Three Musketeers. That is marvelous in a team sport.”

It now appears that Enrique’s vision all along was a PSG without special ones.

“When I arrived at the club two years ago with my own idea and the idea of [football adviser] Luis Campos and president Nasser Al-Khelaifi, we tried to build a different team with a different perspective and different mentality, trying to play as a team,” he said ahead of the final.

“It’s difficult but at the same time easy to do when you work with Luis Campos and Nasser Al-Khelaifi, trying to get new players.

“We are achieving things that we could dream, but at the same time, we need to go step-by-step and try to win the Champions League final.”

What’s remarkable about Enrique’s transformation of PSG is how swiftly it has come together in Kylian Mbappe’s absence.

The team’s cohesion and ability to handle adversity are worlds apart from the stroppy exits that defined Mauricio Pochettino’s time managing a team of Galacticos.

Enrique conceded that he might have had a grand idea for transforming PSG into a functioning collective, but that didn’t mean he’d necessarily be given an extended time to deliver it.

He added: “We all know that we want a long-term project, but when you’ve worked in football for a pretty long time, you know that you don’t have the luxury of waiting or of thinking, ‘We’ll win a title next season,’ because next season, another team might be better than yours. We need to win now and be aiming for titles from day one.”

“If we had to analyze everything that’s happened in the Champions League this season, I think that it would make for a great film because there’s been a bit of everything.

“Thanks to the quality and the growth of our players and despite a difficult schedule with games against some very big teams, we managed to go through.”

Enrique is one of those coaches blessed with a gift of gravitas. When you watch his interviews and feel inspired, you can only wonder what his team talks are like.

Ahead of the crucial clash against Inter Milan, he issued a public rallying cry to players and fans.

“We all want to make history and to win Paris Saint-Germain’s first-ever Champions League,” he told the club’s official website.

“Winning a trophy for the first time is always the hardest, but that’s what motivates me. There are only two teams and one game left, and I think that we can be proud of what we’ve accomplished, but we need to finish the job because our aim is to go down in history.

“Our team deserves to experience this final. I have no doubts about the fact that Paris Saint-Germain’s fans and the club itself deserve to win this trophy.

“I don’t know if it’ll happen on May 31, a year later or two, three or four years later, but I hope that we’ll be the first ones to write that history because that’s what’s motivated us since we first set foot in Paris.”

Whatever your views on Paris Saint-Germain, few can begrudge the inspiring character Luis Enrique.