PSG are ahead of schedule under Luis Enrique – the treble is on
Marquinhos understood it best. Paris Saint-Germain’s captain and all-time leading appearance-maker knows the stakes when it comes to facing Barcelona— because unlike anyone else in the current PSGteam, he still wears the scars of that defeat in 2017, one from which it seemed the French club would never recover.
For him and the PSG supporters, a fixture against Barcelona is like retracting your steps into Hell. So when he stuck out a leg to deny Robert Lewandowski’s final attempt to salvage this season’s quarter-final between the two sides last night, with minutes left on the clock, he was always going to celebrate furiously, with arms pumping, face contorted, voice roaring with raging delight.
Preserving this feat was essential. PSG were two goals down in the tie with an hour to play but, with help from a game-changing red card for home centre-back Ronald Araujo, they had pulled off a ghostbusting comeback in winning 4-1 on the night and 6-4 on aggregate, ensuring no team has knocked Barcelona out of the Champions Leaguemore times than they have.
As a riposte to 2017, this would do nicely.
“Throughout the season, fans have seen a team that is struggling and working,” said PSG’s first-year head coach Luis Enrique, who held the same job with Barca that night at Camp Nou seven years ago. “We are a team; we can play well or badly, but we will seek the result. There is a connection between the fans and the team. It’s very positive. Everyone saw us eliminated (after losing the home leg 3-2 last week), but not the supporters who came here. We are alive in all competitions.”
It is a statement that reflects much about this PSG team. For most of this year, they have been caught in transition. It has taken them time to adjust to Luis Enrique’s particular, possession-based style and they have not always looked cohesive or as controlled as he would perhaps like. They are not the fluent, perfect article. This tie illustrated as much.
But this imperfect team have also won over the supporters and, above all, are into the last four of the competition PSG have always sought to win. As well as reaching next month’s final of the Coupe de France and being 10 points clear at the top of Ligue 1.
They are very much on course for the treble. How did thathappen?
“It’s happiness,” said Luis Enrique, asked about his team overturning that first-leg defeat. “I can’t prove it, but I think that.”
Fortune plays some part too, of course. The red card after half an hour last night perhaps factors in (although you could argue it was by design, targeting the Barca back line with a player of Bradley Barcola’s qualities). The draw was kind, with PSG avoiding Real Madrid, Manchester Cityand Bayern Munich.
It is also worth acknowledging that while parting with Lionel Messi, Neymar and Sergio Ramoslast summer, PSG also spent more than €250million (£213m; $266m) on new players. Those signings were young players, though, and PSG fielded their youngest-ever Champions League side, an average of 23 years and 361 days, in the competition’s previous round against Real Sociedad.
Either way, success like this was certainly not expected.
When Luis Enrique stepped into the top job at PSG last July, it was made clear that his role was to oversee change. Not just in personnel and infrastructure, but in the club’s culture. The mantra that no one person is bigger than the team had to mean something — and if that took time to instil, so be it.
Expectations were reset following his appointment and emphasis was taken away from winning the Champions League — the albatross nesting around the club’s neck — and placed on club development. “The Champions League is not at all an obsession — that is over,” said Nasser Al-Khelaifi, PSG’s president. Success would not be reliant on what can be a lottery; a bad draw, an ill-timed injury and a Champions League campaign can conclude pretty swiftly. Instead, instilling a new playing identity and embedding a squad of new, younger players would take precedence.
A Champions League semi-final was not on the cards for 2023-24. And yet…
“We are ready to go to the final,” insisted star forward and Francecaptain Kylian Mbappe. “We are a great team, we had a great match as a team, as a group. We worked for six days (in preparation for last night’s match) with the idea that we were going to win, and we were sure that it would be a great day for the club.
“It’s awesome. And congratulations to all the staff and staff of the team.”
For Mbappe, there is no long-term in his hometown of Paris, so addressing matters now is pretty vital. He scored twice, ensuring no farewell to Champions League football with PSG just yet before his summer transfer.
If the magnitude of the result was not already clear by the celebrations on the pitch, then it was evidenced by the sight of Mbappe choosing to face the mixed-zone microphones afterwards.
“I’m proud to be here, since day one,” he said. “It’s not because there are good times or bad times that my pride takes a hit. I have this pride in playing for this club, in representing this club in the capital of my country, it’s something special for me who grew up here. Of course, evenings like this, as a Parisian, are great.”
Mbappe was called the “undisputed leader” of the team’s performance by Luis Enrique but he was not the sole protagonist in this play.
Barcola was instrumental and is indicative of a player who, like his team as a whole, is performing above expectations. Signed from Lyon for €50million last summer, he looked set for a bit-part role as Mbappe’s understudy on the left wing and even more so when his cameo against Newcastle, in the group stage, was widely derided.
But he has responded to such an extent that he is now an integral figure; a player so far ahead of schedule that his form may force France coach Didier Deschamps to call him up for the European Championships in the absence of Kingsley Coman, who may miss the tournament because of a recent injury.
Barcola changed this game for PSG. He won the free kick that led to Araujo being sent off with his pace and anticipation, then set up the goal that gave PSG a foothold back in the game (1-1 on the night, 4-3 on aggregate).
There is undoubted quality in this team — but that is not a new thing at PSG. What is, though, is this different outlook, and perspective matters.
“I hope that our ambition overcomes the pressure,” Luis Enrique said, pertinently, ahead of the first leg of this tie.
Rebalancing the scales between ambition and pressure underwrites this season’s development and those words felt particularly apt a week later, before the second leg, when Luis Enrique had provided near-certainty in his next media address that his team would do what they had never done before in the Champions League: overturn a home leg defeat in the knockout phase. Not based on pressure, but ambition.
PSG have swapped the lenses in their glasses this season and now, with a touch of fortune by the nature of the draw, this new mindset has gifted them a third Champions League semi-final since Qatar Sports Investments bought the club in 2011. They now have a very strong chance of reaching the final.
Semi-final opponents Borussia Dortmund, a team they faced this season in the group stage and took four points off in the two games (a 2-0 win in Paris and a 1-1 away draw), are beatable.
Suddenly, a team which is being built for the long term might do what PSG have never done, and win it all.
They may be ahead of schedule, but there is no time like the present.
https://theathletic.com/5421192/2024/04/17/psg-champions-league-semi-final/
PSG are ahead of schedule under Luis Enrique – the treble is on
Marquinhos understood it best. Paris Saint-Germain’s captain and all-time leading appearance-maker knows the stakes when it comes to facing Barcelona— because unlike anyone else in the current PSGteam, he still wears the scars of that defeat in 2017, one from which it seemed the French club would never recover.
For him and the PSG supporters, a fixture against Barcelona is like retracting your steps into Hell. So when he stuck out a leg to deny Robert Lewandowski’s final attempt to salvage this season’s quarter-final between the two sides last night, with minutes left on the clock, he was always going to celebrate furiously, with arms pumping, face contorted, voice roaring with raging delight.
Preserving this feat was essential. PSG were two goals down in the tie with an hour to play but, with help from a game-changing red card for home centre-back Ronald Araujo, they had pulled off a ghostbusting comeback in winning 4-1 on the night and 6-4 on aggregate, ensuring no team has knocked Barcelona out of the Champions Leaguemore times than they have.
As a riposte to 2017, this would do nicely.
“Throughout the season, fans have seen a team that is struggling and working,” said PSG’s first-year head coach Luis Enrique, who held the same job with Barca that night at Camp Nou seven years ago. “We are a team; we can play well or badly, but we will seek the result. There is a connection between the fans and the team. It’s very positive. Everyone saw us eliminated (after losing the home leg 3-2 last week), but not the supporters who came here. We are alive in all competitions.”
It is a statement that reflects much about this PSG team. For most of this year, they have been caught in transition. It has taken them time to adjust to Luis Enrique’s particular, possession-based style and they have not always looked cohesive or as controlled as he would perhaps like. They are not the fluent, perfect article. This tie illustrated as much.
But this imperfect team have also won over the supporters and, above all, are into the last four of the competition PSG have always sought to win. As well as reaching next month’s final of the Coupe de France and being 10 points clear at the top of Ligue 1.
They are very much on course for the treble. How did thathappen?
“It’s happiness,” said Luis Enrique, asked about his team overturning that first-leg defeat. “I can’t prove it, but I think that.”
Fortune plays some part too, of course. The red card after half an hour last night perhaps factors in (although you could argue it was by design, targeting the Barca back line with a player of Bradley Barcola’s qualities). The draw was kind, with PSG avoiding Real Madrid, Manchester Cityand Bayern Munich.
It is also worth acknowledging that while parting with Lionel Messi, Neymar and Sergio Ramoslast summer, PSG also spent more than €250million (£213m; $266m) on new players. Those signings were young players, though, and PSG fielded their youngest-ever Champions League side, an average of 23 years and 361 days, in the competition’s previous round against Real Sociedad.
Either way, success like this was certainly not expected.
When Luis Enrique stepped into the top job at PSG last July, it was made clear that his role was to oversee change. Not just in personnel and infrastructure, but in the club’s culture. The mantra that no one person is bigger than the team had to mean something — and if that took time to instil, so be it.
Expectations were reset following his appointment and emphasis was taken away from winning the Champions League — the albatross nesting around the club’s neck — and placed on club development. “The Champions League is not at all an obsession — that is over,” said Nasser Al-Khelaifi, PSG’s president. Success would not be reliant on what can be a lottery; a bad draw, an ill-timed injury and a Champions League campaign can conclude pretty swiftly. Instead, instilling a new playing identity and embedding a squad of new, younger players would take precedence.
A Champions League semi-final was not on the cards for 2023-24. And yet…
“We are ready to go to the final,” insisted star forward and Francecaptain Kylian Mbappe. “We are a great team, we had a great match as a team, as a group. We worked for six days (in preparation for last night’s match) with the idea that we were going to win, and we were sure that it would be a great day for the club.
“It’s awesome. And congratulations to all the staff and staff of the team.”
For Mbappe, there is no long-term in his hometown of Paris, so addressing matters now is pretty vital. He scored twice, ensuring no farewell to Champions League football with PSG just yet before his summer transfer.
If the magnitude of the result was not already clear by the celebrations on the pitch, then it was evidenced by the sight of Mbappe choosing to face the mixed-zone microphones afterwards.
“I’m proud to be here, since day one,” he said. “It’s not because there are good times or bad times that my pride takes a hit. I have this pride in playing for this club, in representing this club in the capital of my country, it’s something special for me who grew up here. Of course, evenings like this, as a Parisian, are great.”
Mbappe was called the “undisputed leader” of the team’s performance by Luis Enrique but he was not the sole protagonist in this play.
Barcola was instrumental and is indicative of a player who, like his team as a whole, is performing above expectations. Signed from Lyon for €50million last summer, he looked set for a bit-part role as Mbappe’s understudy on the left wing and even more so when his cameo against Newcastle, in the group stage, was widely derided.
But he has responded to such an extent that he is now an integral figure; a player so far ahead of schedule that his form may force France coach Didier Deschamps to call him up for the European Championships in the absence of Kingsley Coman, who may miss the tournament because of a recent injury.
Barcola changed this game for PSG. He won the free kick that led to Araujo being sent off with his pace and anticipation, then set up the goal that gave PSG a foothold back in the game (1-1 on the night, 4-3 on aggregate).
There is undoubted quality in this team — but that is not a new thing at PSG. What is, though, is this different outlook, and perspective matters.
“I hope that our ambition overcomes the pressure,” Luis Enrique said, pertinently, ahead of the first leg of this tie.
Rebalancing the scales between ambition and pressure underwrites this season’s development and those words felt particularly apt a week later, before the second leg, when Luis Enrique had provided near-certainty in his next media address that his team would do what they had never done before in the Champions League: overturn a home leg defeat in the knockout phase. Not based on pressure, but ambition.
PSG have swapped the lenses in their glasses this season and now, with a touch of fortune by the nature of the draw, this new mindset has gifted them a third Champions League semi-final since Qatar Sports Investments bought the club in 2011. They now have a very strong chance of reaching the final.
Semi-final opponents Borussia Dortmund, a team they faced this season in the group stage and took four points off in the two games (a 2-0 win in Paris and a 1-1 away draw), are beatable.
Suddenly, a team which is being built for the long term might do what PSG have never done, and win it all.
They may be ahead of schedule, but there is no time like the present.
https://theathletic.com/5421192/2024/04/17/psg-champions-league-semi-final/
