In the moment of victory, despite the global geopolitical scale of Paris Saint-Germain, the new European champions were only looking to one man. It wasn’t Nasser Al-Khelaifi, or the Emir of Qatar. It was of course Luis Enrique, who the players symbolically lifted above their shoulders.
At that point, he was only thinking of one little girl. Luis Enrique had wanted to plant the PSG flag to echo the moment he had with his departed daughter Xana in 2015, but that went to another level. The emotions went to another level.
As the PSG squad brought the European Cup over to their travelling support following the 5-0 victory over Inter Milan, the fans unveiled a tifo. It was a picture of that moment in 2015 with Barcelona, Luis Enrique planting the flag with Xana, except now in the colours of his PSG. He was visibly moved.
He soon ensured everyone else was moved even more.
In the press conference afterwards, an often-irascible manager couldn’t stop smiling – until he was asked about the tifo. He wanted to make something clear, on a night of so many conflicting emotions.
“Very emotional,” he said. “It’s lovely from the fans, and for my family. But I don’t need to win a Champions League to remember my daughter. She’s always present, with us. I feel it when we lose, too, it crystallises all the positives we lived.”
The story gave such a powerful emotional and human narrative to a football contest that had so many other elements, some of them quite complicated. At the centre of it all, however, it was impossible to not just be happy for Luis Enrique himself.
He has a manic energy that can drive people mad, and is so often so spiky, but he is genuine to the core. He’s always himself.
And, in Munich, he was very man of the hour. We may now be talking about the best coach in the world. That was why the players looking for him and lifting him was so symbolic. Luis Enrique is currently above anyone else.
It wasn’t just about the result, or even the treble. It was the manner of it.
Luis Enrique’s PSG are doing something distinctive, maybe even unique.
It’s all the more pronounced after a season where one of the main themes has been that so many teams play the same way. Even Thomas Tuchel has privately complained that too many just build from the full-backs, with so little freedom. The approach is an evolution of Pep Guardiola’s positional game, but almost going too far in one direction. There is too much position and possession and nowhere near enough individual inspiration.
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That’s what’s so interesting about Luis Enrique’s approach, too. He follows the same ideology, but has gone in completely the other direction. His PSG have turned all that on its head. Far from keeping possession in such a controlled manner, they go at you with everything.
One of the great challenges, that Inter so badly failed, is to try and keep them at bay for those overwhelming first 20 minutes they put you through.
There’s then that exquisite extra quality to it. He lets his attackers run with it, and express themselves. Kvicha Kvaratshkelia feels perfect for the team in that sense.
Through that, as one figure from a rival club put it, they give you so many problems that completely surprise you. You couldn’t have a better representation of that than Kvaratshkelia’s footwork.
He, Ousmane Dembele, Desire Doue and Bradley Barcola are liberated in a way you now rarely see with other elite sides.
The feeling is actually reminiscent of Guardiola’s own 2008-09 Barcelona.
That’s apt, since Luis Enrique has taken it further. Put short, it’s a sophisticated evolution of that ideology.
That’s why we are probably talking about the best in the world right now, the one pushing the game to new limits.
There is of course a fair argument that PSG’s Qatar-backed strength makes all of this much easier. They afforded him a blank slate in a league where they enjoy absurd financial superiority, and even some of their teenagers cost around £50m each.
That is maybe what has taken Luis Enrique’s ideology to these exact levels, where he wins another treble after a record score in a Champions League final. He now has a big enough body of work, however, to show that he could take that approach anywhere and be successful.
It is too easily forgotten how stale and flat Barcelona 2013-14 looked before he took over. A young Spain were meanwhile restored at Euro 2020.
That makes it all the more remarkable that Luis Enrique didn’t actually get to take that approach to the Premier League. A number of clubs, from Chelsea to Manchester United, were interested. All ultimately demurred. There were a variety of reasons, but some of the most common were that he might be too intense, too demanding.
In Munich, we saw what that can actually bring. Such perceptions were also to overlook his very human side, which we also witnessed on the night.
Luis Enrique was the man of the hour, and the best coach in the world right now.
