Luis Enrique won the Champions League with Paris Saint-Germain, 15 months after his daring prediction that they would be better without Kylian Mbappe.
A year after the move from Mbappe to Real Madrid, PSG are European champions for the first time after hammering Inter 5-0 in Munich-the largest winning margin in a European Cup of Champions League final.
The second season of the Spanish coach in Paris has delivered a historic Treble, after he also won the Ligue 1 title and the Coupe de France, with their new identity led by young players such as Desire Done, who scored twice and set up another in the final.
The departure of Mbappe is expected to leave a void, because the striker had been the main score of the club for six consecutive seasons and the global face of their ambition was.
Instead, they became the second French club that won the Champions League after Marseille in 1993, despite a number of doubts in the early season when PSG won only one victory in their opening of five European games.
This is how Luis Enrique continued from Mbappe, and the persistent shadows of other big names, including Neymar and Lionel Messi, to realize PSG's ultimate dream.
The turning point
After a 1-0 defeat against Bayern Munich in November, leaving the team on the edge of elimination from the largest competition in Europe, Luis Enrique was confronted with criticism of his tactical decisions and squad selections.
“You can't understand,” he told a reporter who questions his tactics and method.
Luis Enrique remained resolutely behind the scenes. He said he had gathered the players and the staff for an important internal meeting.
“We are one of the best teams in Europe,” he met, explaining the problem was not a talent, but the implementation.
The coach demanded an immediate improvement in their intensity, and even threatened to resign if the standards in the training do not improve.
5 – Paris SG is the first side to win a European Cup/UEFA Champions League final with a margin of 5+ goals. Manita. #Uclfinal pic.twitter.com/cspu3hyncq
– Optajan (@Optajan) May 31, 2025
PSG organized Manchester City in a must-win match in January and won 4-2, after returning from 2-0 in a performance that transformed their season.
From that moment PSG was almost flawless. A 4-1 victory in Stuttgart provided progression, followed by knockout victories on Brest (by a 10-0 aggregated Scoreline), Liverpool (on penalties in Anfield), Aston Villa and Arsenal.
Built to resist pressure
This PSG team did not stuck under the pressure to know that the Champions League was the most important target on which they would be assessed.
Ousmane Dembele had his best season and scored 32 goals in all competitions, while Doue became a new star for the club and was directly involved in three goals in the final – an unprecedented performance.
Often criticized by the French media, goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma produced big moments at important moments to hold them in competitions, while January signing Khvicha Kvaratskhelia ended with a goal in the final to take his count at the French club to eight in all competitions.
Luis Enrique also brought a much -needed discipline into his team in his team, leaving Dembele against Arsenal in the competition stage after he was too late to train.
Despite losing 2-0, the head coach said: “That was my best decision of the season.”
Dembele returned a player transformed, spent in the coming years as a poster boy for unfulfilled potential.
Now that European champions, the trophy ends a 14 -year waiting time for Qatar Sports Investments, which the club bought in 2011 with the aim of being the best in Europe. That is now a reality.