How PSG and its masterful coach tore down a superteam to build a Champions League winner
In the penultimate month of Paris Saint-Germain’s superteam era, Kylian Mbappé sat motionless in a mostly dark room, and endured a rant that explains PSG’s 2025 Champions League triumph.It began with a lesson about Michael Jordan. “Michael Jordan,” PSG’s first-year head coach, Luis Enrique, told Mbappé in expletive-laden Spanish, “would grab his teammates by the balls and defend with them.” Mbappé, soccer’s golden boy, wasn’t doing that.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAnd so, for a minute and a half, with his hands gesticulating and his animated body leaning in toward PSG’s last megastar, Enrique delivered a lecture that might as well have been a manifesto.“You think that you only have to score goals,” Enrique told Mbappé. “ ... But that's not enough for me.” He explained that his striker also had to lead an impassioned, coordinated press. And if Mbappé would lead it, “you know […]
