In the summer of 2021, Paris Saint-Germain apparently had everything he needed to get the only thing he did not have: a reputation as one of the great world football winners.
His list appeared built from a video game. Kylian Mbappé, the 22 -year -old World Cup champion in France, next to the Brazilian superstar Neymar and, in an impressive signing, Lionel Messi, the Argentine many considered the best player in the world of all time. The collection of three of the best goals in the world, and a total payroll of almost $ 430 million, was possible thanks to the equally amazing resources of the club.
Since 2011, the PSG has been owned by an arm of the Sovereign Fund of Qatar wealth, which freely spent to establish it among the most successful clubs in the world. Although the PSG routinely won the best football division in France, he had never won the Champions League, the annual and most prestigious club tournament in Europe, and only once played for the title.
According to some metrics, the two -year race with Mbappé, Messi and Neymar was a resounding success. The PSG full of stars raised more than $ 1 billion in income, according to the club. But when leaving the Champions League in the 16th round in 2022 and 2023, and with Mbappé, Neymar and Messi playing together in just one third of its potential games, the PSG was never close to conquering Europe in the field.
The three stars finally departed, replaced by younger and less expensive successors. For most clubs, that would have indicated the beginning of a reconstruction.
On the other hand, only two years later, a less herald and less expensive version of PSG could win the most coveted title that eluded its star predecessors when it plays Internalionale of Milan in the final of the Champions League on Saturday in Munich.
A champions League trophy would be remarkable not only for the PSG, one of the most prominent clubs that had ever won the tournament. Only a team from France has won it, and that was 32 years ago.
The PSG enters as the favorite because under the manager Luis Enrique, it no longer works as a star system but as a team, said NBC Sports Robbie Metoe, a former English Premier League player.
“There is a lot of evidence that having star players in a team does not create a team, and the PSG is a great example with Neymar and Lionel Messi and Mbappé and all the others who have had there,” Mustoe said. “A general team is needed, and you really can’t have passengers too much now. And what I mean by that are the players that light when they have the ball and go out when they don’t have the ball.”
“The PSG is such an surprising example of this, where they changed the manager, obviously they got rid of all the star players, they were younger, they became more hungry.”
Even with Mbappé of only 22 years in 2021, the average age in the PSG list that season was 27.8, two years older than in his average opponent, thanks to the fact that Messi, 34, joined Neymar, 29, and Ángel Di Maria, 33, 33.
This season, the average age of the team is 25, two years younger than that of its average opponent, a reflection of the PSG’s decision after the 2023 season of “completely changing its strategy” of the construction of the list, said Alice Lefebvre, a reporter from the France-Presse agency that the PSG covers, by email.
“The club’s management has stopped obsessing the Champions League, as they had done so far, and have officially declared that they are giving time to build a project around young players and young people who come through the Parisian training program,” Lefebvre wrote. “As the season advanced, despite some internal tensions between some players and Luis Enrique at the beginning of the season, a new spirit began to permeate the team. Everyone plays for everyone, and everyone presses the ball, as the coach wants.”
Enrique and sports director Luís Campos recruited younger players, including the French end Désé Doué, 20, a star largely for whom the team paid $ 54 million to acquire last summer, João Neves and Willian Pacho. The oldest pillar is the 31 -year -old Brazilian defender Marquinhos. The majority of the team is at its best, as the top scorer Ousmane Dembélé, or entering him, like Bradley Barcola, 22, whom Enrique has called “the best pin in Ligue 1; it is one of the best dribles in Europe.” The arrival in January of Khvicha Kvarathskhelia of Italy strengthened PSG’s ability to attack.
Enrique, who was accustomed to high profile and high pressure work before, after Barcelona had achieved a title of the Champions League, then trained the Spanish National Team. When PSG hired him in 2023 after Messi left and Neymar was in the process of leaving, Enrique arrived with a specific project, Lefebvre wrote, to get young players who would defend himself and attack in unison. In the competition of the Champions League, PSG has the fourth highest pass precision and the third highest possession.
“While Luis Enrique is here, the strategy will continue to be one of the young women instead of the stars,” Lefebvre wrote.
Enrique also had the task of reviewing an attitude change. The team would no longer be built on the potential brilliance of three players, but in the obstacle of the 11.
“A player from Paris Saint-Germain has to get used to starting, getting out of the bank or not even being called,” Enrique told journalists in the middle of the team’s champions League race. “We make sure that each player who goes is 100% and gives everything.”
Perhaps the best work of the coach has been the best season of Dembélé’s career, whose potential had always been evident. Barcelona signed Dembélé in 2017 with ambitions that he became the successor of his outgoing star Neymar. On the other hand, for six combined inconsistent seasons, he scored 24 goals and helped in 34 more.
When the PSG needed Neymar’s own replacement in 2023, he also placed his hopes in Dembélé. This season, his second for the PSG, Dembélé scored 21 goals during the national season and eight more in 14 games of the Champions League, and added 10 assists between the two.
Enrique’s training has imitated Dembélé’s role in his career in clubs in France and Germany, allowing “more freedom to go everywhere in the field,” said Dembélé this week.
“I have my orientation,” he said, “he just try to create space and cause some chaos in the center of the field. This has been paying off so far.”
In relation to its past, the PSG reigned on its payroll this season to $ 220 million, a number that is even greater than that of the three next height teams of the next division of combined France and that would also occupy the second highest in the main league of England, the richest national league in the world.
The different thing is that now the PSG could have a trophy to show for all that expense. While previous PSG teams were not prepared to “suffer,” said Metoe, a fashion word in global football with the loose definition of the ability of a team to support their struggles, this year, “they have a team that suffers from immense ability,” he said.
The PSG demonstrated it during the elimination stage of the Champions League, when the advance is based on the aggregate score of a series of two games. The PSG lost in the 16 round of Liverpool at home, then remained firm to win on the road with penalties and advance. After beating Aston Villa in the quarterfinals, he won again on the way to open his semifinal against Arsenal, then advanced only to the second final of the Club Champions League with a house victory on May 7.
“If we had to analyze everything that has happened in the UEFA Champions League this season, I think it would be a great thriller or a horror movie or even a very good series, because it has had a bit of everything,” said Enrique, who achieved Barcelona for a title of the Champions League a decade ago, this week.
“I think we should be proud of what we have achieved. However, we have to finish the job because what we really point out is make history.”
