King of the impossible: How Luis Enrique rewarded PSG's faith with UCL crown

The football revolution that culminated in a mini-miracle Saturday when Paris Saint-Germain won both their first UEFA Champions League and the fabled treble in Munich began when their inspirational coach, Luis Enrique, decided there was absolutely no way he could manage in Paris.

I know because I was in the conversation when he announced, in that “end of the debate” way of his: “The one elite club where I’ll never coach is PSG. … They’re devoted to a ‘superstar culture’ which I will never, ever accept … and I don’t speak French!”

From that lunch we had in the little village where he lives, in the hills of Catalonia overlooking the Mediterranean, only 26 months passed until 19-year-old Senny Mayulu completed the 5-0 rout and gave PSG the biggest Champions League final-winning scoreline in the 70 years of this magnificent competition.

That’s a mini-miracle in itself. There are others.

When Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur interviewed him (a total of three times) about taking over their clubs in summer 2023, he went to speak to them a little grudgingly.

Luis Enrique had told me and my colleagues at ZoomSport Films, while we were preparing to make our documentary with him: “The club which hires me next will really have to want me! They’ll have to understand how I work, what my beliefs are, they’ll have to completely buy into how my teams play … and they’ll have to come here to interview me. Right to my house to persuade me!”

When first Chelsea, then Spurs, told him that they fancied a radical leader — that they were tempted by his CV, his attitudes, the treble he had won with Barcelona and the way he had brought through ultra-young international talents such as Ansu Fati, Pedri and Gavi while with Spain — they also told him that he would have to interview at Chelsea’s Cobham headquarters, then at Spurs Lodge and at Daniel Levy’s place in Switzerland.

“Lucho,” as anyone who knows him well tends to call him, turned up, turned up his nose at what he thought was a very muddled chain of command at Chelsea, was turned down by Spurs because they thought his command of English wasn’t quite enough — but then welcomed PSG to his house.

If you were watching Saturday while PSG wiped the floor with Inter Milan, shredding them with ruthless persistence and dazzling flair, then you’ll have seen a couple of quiet moments amid the hubbub of euphoria on the pitch when Lucho embraced a diminutive, bespectacled man. That was Luis Campos. He’s the 60-year-old Portuguese executive who built the 2016-17 Ligue 1 title-winning Monaco side, having brought Radamel Falcao, Fabinho, João Moutinho and even a young Kylian Mbappé to the Stade Louis II, and who is now PSG’s director of football.

It was he who trekked from the French capital to Catalonia, drove up into the remote, wooded hills where Luis Enrique lived and told him: We are 100 percent devoted to you, to your playing style. We will back you, we will give you total authority over the training ground and the squad, you’ll be able to get rid of who you want, and although there will be budgetary limits, we’ll try back you every single time you want to sign a player — we want you!

Chelsea and Spurs snapped their fingers and expected the Spaniard to come running; PSG were humble enough to drop everything for him. Mini-miracle!

While Queen’s “We Are the Champions” blared out in Munich; as Inter’s players, dejected and devastated, looked on; and as the Paris fans unfurled their homemade tifo depicting the scene from 2015 when Luis Enrique last won the treble, in Berlin with Barcelona, and danced on the pitch with his late daughter Xana, the two men hugged and knew that this was a story of promises fulfilled.

A couple of weeks ago, when I interviewed him for UEFA, Luis Enrique told me: “When I came to PSG, everyone was on board with what we meant to do and we reached agreement rather quickly. Our goal was to create something different, something special. Something which could attract players and make them want to come to PSG. We had to make the right signings, for which the sporting director, the president and all the staff were very important. We believed in the profile of players we looked for, like Willian Pacho, João Neves and Désiré Doué.”

Campos promised to back the new coach, and he delivered. But the joyous nature of the cavorting on the Allianz Arena pitch contrasted sharply with the environment Luis Enrique inherited at PSG. Partly the playing side, but, interestingly, the PSG president’s point of view too.

Nasser Al-Khelaifi told him, in a well-meaning way: Don’t feel under any pressure just because everyone says we are obsessed with the Champions League. You’re here to build a project, we won’t be demanding that you immediately bring us the big trophy that we’ve never won.

His new Spanish employee immediately contradicted him: We start today. I’m not the kind of man who plans a “project” and keeps telling everyone: “In a few years we’ll be ready to win it.” I haven’t got that mindset and we don’t have the time for that. In this life you try to do the things which are important to you, the things you desire, right away.

Neymar was kicked out, even though Luis Enrique’s family were just a little heartbroken at saying an immediate goodbye to that likeable, Peter Pan scamp who had been so inspirational to the 2015 treble at Barcelona but who, by summer 2023, had become the living embodiment of everything this coach stands against.

Marco Verratti, although Luis Enrique adored him as a person and had loved the way he had played at his prime, was told to find another club, too. Lionel Messi had already decided to quit Paris in search of Miami victories.

Maybe it’s worth admitting, now, that Luis Enrique’s impatience to win the Champions League, to make history (which he messaged us on Saturday night was the thing that most motivated him), has partly to do with the worst experiences of his lifetime.

The world now understands what he; his wife, Elena; and his kids, Pacho and Sira; went through when little Xana, their daughter and sister, died in 2019.

Luis Enrique had explained to the world what happened, why he needed a leave of absence from his job as Spain coach and what it had done to the Martinez family when their beloved, funny, characterful, competitive Xana died of bone cancer in 2019. But because he shared so much about the experience with us in our joint documentary, titled “You have no f—ing idea” when translated from Spanish, everyone now knows how he and his family dealt with loss.

Indeed, Luis Enrique’s words in the buildup to the final — when he mentioned that Xana was still with them, in spirit if not physically — inspired the PSG fans to launch their aforementioned tifo behind the goalmouth Saturday.

But too few people will remember that the wiry, crew-cut young man celebrating with Luis Enrique, assistant coach Rafel Pol, had his own tragedy on his mind while reaching the pinnacle of his career in victory Saturday. Rafel missed most of Lucho’s first season at PSG caring for his wife, Raquel, who had cancer and eventually died because of it. Too few will remember Luis Enrique’s long-term friend and assistant coach for many years, Juan Carlos Unzue, who now suffers from ALS.

With these three pieces of brutal misfortune around, who could blame Lucho for thinking that important things need to be done in a hurry? Just in case.

He told me: “Traumatic experiences change you for better and for worse. In fact, there are people around me who were important at many times and life, for no reason, makes them disappear from you. It seems to me that our path is sufficiently complicated so that each one chooses the people who are interesting, and there are moments when you reflect that, many times, those negative experiences are the ones that have brought you the most benefits in your life because they have hurt, because they are painful, because they have taken their toll on you. Most of the things that have happened in my life are very positive, and with the negative ones, I have tried to take the positive side which they all have.”

I genuinely believe that Luis Enrique is a unique presence in football. Not because of his belligerent nature, not because he’s unafraid of saying precisely what’s on his mind, not even because statistically he’s one of only two managers to ever win the treble twice. No, I believe that he is endlessly brave in absolutely sticking to his own football beliefs and trying to imprint that philosophy on the people who employ him, the people who play for him, the people who work in his technical team, and even on the hearts and minds of those who watch his team — fans or media.

I think our documentary helped him become “in vogue,” but I think this will reach a new level now because the brilliance, the effervescence, the cleverness and the efficacy of Paris’ football against Inter in Munich was utterly stunning.

The pressing, the organization, the positional switches, the incessant demand to be at their best from minute one to minute 95, the way his young team harassed and eventually surpassed the club that had bumped Barcelona out of those epic semifinals — that will light people’s imagination. That will make people fall in love with PSG, for a long time something of a laughingstock club outside France, perhaps even outside the French capital.

Paris as a city, as a culture, its architecture, its literature, its romance — that has always been fashionable. Its football team? Almost never. Until now. That, my friends, is the Lucho effect for you.

The last time my colleagues and I visited him at home in Catalonia, rather than in Paris, was the day after this season’s Champions League draw was made.

In Luis Enrique’s debut season, Paris had to face what he called “the group of death” vs. Milan, Dortmund and Newcastle, and until the last match, he was fighting to not be eliminated in the group stage. PSG made the semifinals, but their route, including a seesaw quarterfinal vs. Barça, was extremely tough.

When the draw was made for this new Champions League format, he literally could not believe that the road to qualification for the knockout stages led through Arsenal, PSV Eindhoven, Atlético Madrid, Bayern Munich and Manchester City.

When we went to visit him for a showing of our film, drinks, and dinner, he was genuinely incandescent with rage at the unfairness of it all. Subsequently, they lost at Arsenal, lost at Bayern and lost at home to Atlético, and reaching the knockout stages required a playoff tie.

A couple of weeks ago he confirmed ruefully: “Honestly, if we were to analyze everything that has happened in the Champions [League] this season it would make a great thriller or horror film, because it has had a bit of everything. We deserved better results, but they just didn’t come, and our finishing was almost ridiculous — it’s very rare to see a team at this level with such low efficacy in front of goal.

“We had four points — just four — and we were more out than in! The table showed one thing, but what we were feeling was something else entirely. We felt that the team was doing a lot of things well. Statistically, we were close to the best teams in the Champions League, but we were far off in terms of finishing, and if you don’t score goals, you don’t win matches.”

What happened is that with Mbappé gone, Lucho moved Ousmane Dembélé to center forward and things exploded. The Frenchman went to his boss and asked to take the penalties with Mbappé having departed. Luis Enrique didn’t trust his spot-kick talents and let him take only two of the 19 PSG were awarded this season.

But the manager loved his chutzpah, and there was enough in Dembélé’s attitude for him to dare to give the maverick more responsibility of another kind: asking for a huge goal total and telling the former winger that PSG wouldn’t win the Champions League unless he delivered. Responsibility placed with a player who I personally thought was destined to be talented but flaky all his life, who then delivered maximally to prove the Spaniard 100 percent correct.

It’s a decision he presaged at the end of our filming with him. He told us: “Do I think I’ll do things better in the second season? No question about it. The fact that I had a player [Mbappé] who went where he wanted, when he wanted, on the pitch meant that I had no control over some aspects of our game. [In 2024-25] I’ll be in control of everything. Everything. No exceptions.”

Four more trophies later, with PSG completing a clean sweep of French silverware and becoming the most comprehensive winners of the European Cup or Champions League in the entire 70 years of its existence, I think we can say that even if his enemies don’t, he does have an idea.

In fact, all hail my demanding, funny, frenetic, talented, inspirational and sometimes irascible friend. Champion of Europe.

All hail Luis Enrique, king of the impossible.