Paris St-Germain arrive at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday sixth in Ligue 1, with three wins, two draws and one defeat. In most seasons at most clubs that would be a crisis. In Paris nobody is panicking, partly because the same thing happened last year and partly because the manager has told them not to.
Luis Enrique is fond of a line of Johan Cruyff's, that the hardest thing in football is winning after winning. He has built this season around it. PSG are back-to-back European champions and could become only the second side to win three Champions Leagues in a row, while also chasing a third straight league title. "Do you want to bet against us?" he said recently, which is about as much as he gives anyone.
Everything is designed against complacency
When the club announced his new contract to 2030, they announced new deals for Joao Neves, Fabian Ruiz, Willian Pacho, Lucas Beraldo and Senny Mayulu on the same day. The message to the dressing room was that nobody is being rewarded for what they already won; they are being kept for what comes next.
Very little else has changed since he arrived in 2023. Joaquin Valdes, his assistant since their Barcelona B days, is the one who speaks to players personally and keeps his boss grounded. Rafel Pol handles strategy and acts as second in command. Training looks much as it did three years ago: not many video sessions, a big screen on the pitch for live corrections, two cranes so the coaches can see the shape from above.
What has changed is depth.
It is why the Ligue 1 table does not alarm them. Ousmane Dembele was left out of the squad entirely for Saturday's 3-1 win over Le Mans. Lucas Digne was left out earlier in the season. Against Le Mans the manager used eight players who would not start a big European night, and when the score was level he sent on four of the first-choice group to finish it. Against City, the starters arrive rested.
Selling famous names without losing the team
The attack has been rebuilt. Gonzalo Ramos, Bradley Barcola and Lee Kang-in all left. Mika Godts and Ferran Torres came in, and Dani Gil, Paris correspondent for the Spanish station COPE, explained the thinking plainly: the departing players had won everything and been paid well for it, and the club wanted hungrier ones. Barcola's flashes were enough to persuade Liverpool to pay £123m for him, but the coaching staff did not believe he would reach Dembele's level.
Torres is the more interesting case. He was unhappy at Barcelona even in a season that produced his best numbers, worked on his mental strength, started calling himself "the Shark", and has since scored the winner for Spain in the World Cup final and seven goals in France. He has also accepted the arrangement every PSG player accepts, which is that in a Luis Enrique team the star is Luis Enrique.
The academy at the bottom of the hill
Four homegrown players featured in last season's Champions League run: Warren Zaire-Emery, Mayulu, Quentin Ndjantou and Ibrahim Mbaye. The campus that produced them opened in November 2024 after a 350m-euro investment, with the first team, the men's and women's academies and the school all on one site. The senior headquarters sit at the top of a hill and the academy sits at the bottom, so the young players have to climb, which is either a planning accident or the most on-the-nose piece of symbolism in European football.
The method runs downwards. Yohan Cabaye, director of the training centre, speaks regularly with sporting director Luis Campos and deputy director of professional football Olivier Gagne, and all three go to youth games when they can. During the recent international break only four senior players stayed at the club, along with sixteen academy players who were also away, and Luis Enrique spent three weeks on the training ground with whoever was left.
Prediction
City are unbeaten and three points clear at the top of the Premier League after winning at Anfield, and the Etihad is not a place to be carrying a slow start. But PSG's slow starts have stopped meaning anything, their squad is deeper than it was last season, and they have had a full week to prepare for one match. Call it a draw, with PSG the likelier of the two to score first.
Preview: Manchester City v Paris St-Germain, Etihad Stadium, Wednesday. PSG are the holders and sixth in Ligue 1 with three wins, two draws and a defeat. Luis Enrique is contracted to 2030.
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