PSG have taken the long road to Champions League glory \u2013 with humiliations by Manchester United and Newcastle \u2013 but Luis Enrique has ended their \u2018obsession\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Champions League is not at all an obsession \u2013 that is over. I said that at the first press conference with Luis Enrique,\u201d said PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi with all the conviction of a man whose sportswashing had shrunk under the pressure of one too many loads.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are building a new identity; our own style, our own principles of how to play, an offensive play, and a new culture. That\u2019s what we want, and then the results will follow.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are building a team that is really playing as a team. We want our players to enjoy playing, our staff to enjoy coaching, and for our fans to enjoy it when you watch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ten days later, PSG were beaten 4-1 at St James\u2019 Park<\/strong><\/a>. The players, staff and fans cannot have particularly enjoyed watching Miguel Almiron, Dan Burn, Sean Longstaff and Fabian Schar score against Europe\u2019s perennial underachievers \u2013 although the schadenfreude was irresistible for neutrals.<\/p>\n It has been a long, arduous and often absurd journey to the summit. PSG have avoided the ultimate ignominy of exiting at the group stage ever since this odyssey began, but the trade-off for that has been a preposterous propensity to stumble at all manner of other hurdles: consecutive away-goal eliminations by Barcelona and Chelsea; victims of La Remontada; a humiliation so thorough it forced Manchester United to make Ole Gunnar Solskjaer their manager for more than two years<\/strong><\/a>; being entirely and utterly Karim Benzema\u2019d in the Bernabeu.<\/p>\n PSG and the Champions League had been in a toxic, unrequited relationship for years, and the former was kidding itself if they ever believed themselves to be in a position to declare it \u201cover\u201d.<\/p>\n But Luis Enrique has broken the cycle.<\/p>\n The Spaniard\u2019s words at his unveiling became a eulogy at the funeral of Inter\u2019s entire psyche. \u201cThe attacking identity is non-negotiable \u2013 it\u2019s my philosophy. You have to adapt to your players, my job is to get the best out of my players individually and collectively. I am committed to putting a winning team together and I have no doubt that I will be able to do that and give PSG fans something they will like.\u201d<\/p>\n There were tears in the stands, in the dugout, on the pitch. It was historic but harrowing, a traumatic scene of youthful exuberance obliterating grizzled experience. It was the end of the road for Inter, who would have taken Boyz II Men 0 as early as the 20th minute had they been offered the choice. And after almost a decade and a half it is the belated start of what PSG hope to translate into a period of utter dominance.<\/p>\n Over the course of those 90 minutes it was difficult to envisage any other scenario developing over the next few years. The youngest starting line-up in a Champions League final this century produced two of the five youngest ever European Cup final scorers. The man of the match was 19-year-old Desire Doue. The only player older than 30 of the 16 used was record appearance maker Marquinhos. This is not a group on the verge of disbanding.<\/p>\n That provided an interesting juxtaposition with Inter, for whom this was a second Champions League final in three years, but with the tangible sense it would be their last together. The future of Simone Inzaghi is deeply uncertain, three of their starters were at least 36 and the rest were made to look twice as old. PSG started by hammering the ball out for a throw-in deep in Inter\u2019s half and for the subsequent hour and a half rarely afforded them the opportunity to escape.<\/p>\n This was their last stand and the early mistakes betrayed it, culminating in the double salvo from\u00a0Federico Dimarco which ended the game as a contest. He was caught in his own offside trap and then later isolated by Doue down the right as PSG took the quickest two-goal lead in final history.<\/p>\n READ MORE<\/strong>:\u00a0Champions League prize money table revealed: Liverpool earnings cover most of Wirtz fee<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Willian Pacho was winning everything, including a battle with Nico Barella as the Inter midfielder hoped to shepherd the ball out for a corner, only for the PSG centre-half to poke it away and launch the counter which produced the second goal. Achraf Hakimi started popping up at centre-forward and on the left-wing.<\/p>\n Hakan Calhanoglu, the set-piece master, was gifted a presentable free-kick in the vicinity of the PSG area and thumped it straight out for a goal kick early in the second half; it summed the proceedings up neatly.<\/p>\n Then came the landslide. Inzaghi made his changes, four by the hour mark. The sight of Matteo Darmian taking to the pitch somehow did not galvanise Inter but PSG derived motivation from it anyway, hitting a ridiculous triple punch of quality goals: Vitinha to Doue;\u00a0Ousmane Dembele to\u00a0Khvicha Kvaratskhelia;\u00a0Bradley Barcola to fellow substitute\u00a0Senny Mayulu.<\/p>\n It was almost painful to watch by the end, particularly through the prism of the hapless Francesco Acerbi.<\/p>\n Perhaps only Kylian Mbappe had a more uncomfortable night as the modern-day Michael Owen: the prodigy distracted by the lights of Real Madrid, only for his boyhood club to thrive and immediately capture the sport\u2019s biggest prize in his absence. He might be able to console himself with having scored in that Newcastle defeat.<\/p>\n As it is, the evening belonged not to Al-Khelaifi \u2013 despite some weird yet entirely predictable \u201cwin for football\u201d nonsense<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0\u2013 but Luis Enrique. His personal story is touching enough but even on a professional level it is refreshing to watch such a phenomenally talented and often overlooked coach<\/strong><\/a> achieve something so historic.<\/p>\n This PSG success cannot be framed properly without acknowledging the vast spend needed to deliver it. With the highest wage bill in Europe and over \u00a3200m invested on transfers this season alone it is, in many ways, simple maths. But Enrique going where incredible managers before him could not at least means something.<\/p>\n And that thing, ultimately, is a Super Cup final against Spurs. It is the showdown of Europe\u2019s true greatest teams we all deserve, and the only real way to celebrate the long-awaited climax of an \u201cobsession\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PSG have taken the long road to Champions League glory \u2013 with humiliations by Manchester United and Newcastle…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[748,393,14146,14147,163,4884,225,10034,2465,98,3047,12,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-147959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-f365-features","11":"tag-f365-says","12":"tag-front-page","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-home-page","15":"tag-luis-enrique","16":"tag-manchester","17":"tag-manchester-united","18":"tag-newcastle-united","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114604947087981256","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}