Arsenal won’t recognise ‘new PSG’ after Luis Enrique’s six-month rebrand | OneFootball

For this trip to Arsenal, Ousmane Dembele is going to try and do more than follow Luis Enrique’s instructions. The French star wants to bring this Paris Saint-Germain team to the next level, in the same way the Spanish coach has done for everyone else at the club.

You couldn’t really have a better indication of that transformation than Dembele’s own standards since PSG's last visit to Arsenal. There are the 24 goals in 23 games, sure. There is also the sheer discipline, a quality that hasn’t always been associated with either the player or the club. Luis Enrique felt he had no choice but to drop Dembele for the 2-0 defeat at the Emirates back in October. The 27-year-old had been turning up late for training, and the word from within the club was that “he was behaving like it was the old PSG”.

Luis Enrique was determined to stamp that out, and he has done so to resounding success. By demanding discipline but also being flexible enough to bring previously wayward stars like Dembele back in, he has created a new PSG.

A team brimming with youthful energy have naturally won most of their games in France, nothing too distinctive there. They have managed that, however, with a uniquely exquisite intensity that has also seen them win seven of nine games in the Champions League. The performances have put them among the favourites for the competition since the last 16, but have also made them one of the most favoured teams. A common description, even within the game, is of “a breath of fresh air”.

There are two highly notable aspects about this.

One is purely football, and how PSG have achieved the rare feat of suddenly transforming to Champions League winners’ level in the middle of the season. The Arsenal matches almost serve as a barometer.

In October, they were so supine, as Mikel Arteta's team easily beat them. Now, the Basque coach is bracing his Arsenal team for the full force of that PSG attack. There is the threat that the London side could be caught up in the hurricane, blown away like so many sides since.

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PSG couldn’t handle Arsenal’s strength and composure in their last trip to the Emirates Stadium (Adam Davy/PA Wire)

People in football talk about PSG now with awe, reminiscent of champions who make a real mark. That mid-season shift, from a sense of fragility to instead having a real fear factor, is so rare in the modern game that it tends to happen every five years - if that. What's more, the most obvious examples all won trebles - exactly what PSG are going for now.

The Champions League most recently saw this gear-change with Bayern Munich 2019-20, who went from losing Bundesliga home games in December to a spell when they won 30 out of 31 games, to secure a treble. A mid-season appointment of Hansi Flick was crucial. Before that, there was arguably Jose Mourinho's Internazionale 2009-10. They scraped through a Champions League group ahead of Rubin Kazan and Shakhar Donetsk but behind Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, to eventually beat the latter in an epic semi-final on the way to their treble.

Most relevantly, there was Luis Enrique’s own Barcelona 2014-15. In January 2015, they had lost 1-0 to David Moyes' Real Sociedad, as the club also faced one of their customary institutional crises. Barcelona legend Andoni Zubizarreta was fired as sporting director amid fresh presidential elections, as Leo Messi made his displeasure with the head coach clear. He had called in sick for a Monday training session, having confronted Luis Enrique over his refereeing of a training match. That little vignette seemed to betray deeper resentments. Midfielder Xavi decided to act. He called a truce for the sake of the season, in which Luis Enrique displayed a deftness he is not always associated with. Barcelona went on to produce one of the great campaigns, as they won the club’s second treble. Such was the spectacle they put on that there were debates over whether the team of 2014-15 surpassed Guardiola’s 2008-11 side.

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Luis Enrique has redefined PSG as they push for the treble (PA Wire)

The key point is that people spoke about them in the way they are doing with PSG now. That came from similar management.

Luis Enrique had been facing immense pressure after that October defeat to Arsenal, particularly given PSG's poor position, and the doubt that they would even get through the group stage. There was actually discussion over whether the club should go back to a star system, as questions about "the project" only grew.

The PSG leadership, for their part, were willing to fully back Luis Enrique. The Spaniard stayed resolute, Dembele was conditionally welcomed back in, and the coach’s ideology began to bed in. By January, PSG were flying, playing possibly the best football in Europe.

An almost humble intensity has been visible, as young players are clearly putting the team above everything. They are also going to those higher levels, with football that is simply dazzling. Only adding to that sense of youthful excitement has been Luis Enrique’s willingness to allow players to express themselves in his system. PSG matches have been elevated by old-fashioned dribbling, particularly from Dembele, Bradley Barcola and the unique Kvicha Kvaratshkelia.

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PSG are playing possibly the best football in Europe (Action Images via Reuters)

The way they whizz past you contributes to that breath of fresh air.

That has fostered another transformation, that is almost nothing to do with football.

PSG have gone from the club everyone derided to a team that so many admire. If only the Qatari ownership had been told this before all the years of indulging stars like Neymar, Messi and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Their sportswashing project is now enthusiastically spoken of, in a way the hierarchy had always wanted. It has made them “cool”.

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PSG have abandoned their old superstar-heavy philosophy to become a “breath of fresh air” (AP)

There is actually something distasteful about that, which in turn says a lot about modern football. That is actually how easy it can be.

More critical figures in the game are willing to point out how it’s still not that much of a deviation from PSG. Barcola and the brilliant Desire Doue were signed for a collective €95m from Lyon and Rennes, respectively, in the sort punt on youth that a club that wealthy can afford to take. You only have to look at their ability to just discard the €80m Randal Kolo Muani.

The mid-season transformation was then greatly propelled by the signing of Kvaratshkelia. That’s €70m on one of the best players in the world, who other clubs wanted but didn’t feel they could get due to the difficulty of negotiating with Napoli and his camp.

PSG could make it happen. That is the other side to all of this.

PSG have also come out the other side of a wider project. There’s similarly the belief in the game that they only landed there once it became clear the big stars were fed up, with many no longer wanting to join them. There's a view that left PSG with no choice, and then they acted as if this was always the masterplan. Kvaratshkelia is at once the sign of something new and what they were always about.