PSG v Bayern: Kompany hails Paris project as ‘revolutionary’ | OneFootball

"What’s the recipe for beating PSG? I don’t know! You have to believe, because we’re playing against the European champion, who is always a favorite this season. It’s still a challenge to overcome. We have to believe in our chances. We learned a lot from them last season and we’ve learned other things about PSG this season. We’ve spent hours preparing for this match and it’s a pleasure to analyze another team’s football."

What aspect of PSG’s game impresses you the most? It’s the collective, the willingness to run, whether in possession or after losing the ball. I think when PSG is playing at full strength, there’s no point in focusing on one particular player. That’s not PSG’s main strength. PSG has always had world-class players, but its strength is its collective, and that’s what makes the match interesting. It’s going to be an intense match, both teams have great qualities and it will come down to the details.

How are you going to contain Nuno Mendes? There’s an individual aspect at PSG, because you can talk about Mendes, Hakimi, Dembélé, the Ballon d’Or. We could go on for a long time, the list doesn’t end. What makes them stronger is the fact that they work as a team. Mendes benefits from this, he’s a player who has qualities in big spaces against teams that play on equal terms. These are matches that will improve his game. We also have our strengths, players who can perform in this kind of environment. What kind of match are you expecting? We already played PSG last season: we won once, we lost once, but the score could have gone the other way. That’s how it is. If everyone is fit, which is the case for us and also for PSG, it will be an interesting Champions League match.

Do you consider this match the biggest challenge of your career against a team that has progressed enormously since your previous encounters? In what areas have they progressed? If you only looked at the results last season, there was a PSG that struggled in the Champions League but won in Ligue 1. But if you looked at the content, it was a team that dominated every match, that deserved to win every match, and the results didn’t reflect what they did later. PSG was already very strong in 2024. They have young players, which is an advantage, because they can always improve. It’s a team that is learning to know itself. Against them, matches are played on a knife edge. There’s been an evolution over time because the team was already in place and we’re trying to do the same thing."

What do you think of Luis Enrique’s work? PSG is a club with a revolutionary idea. He managed to implement it with young players. Even the players he went out to get are already good and they’ll be very good in 5-6 years. We can always talk about tactics and strategy but I think it’s not easy to change so many things, because he was criticized at the beginning. When they lost to us in November, the French journalists criticized him and in the end, he became the best coach! It’s a beautiful story. The way Luis Enrique managed to change things and make the club evolve is impressive."

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