Paris St Germain and Manchester City’s Champions League clash brings former colleagues and friends Luis Enrique and Pep Guardiola head-to-head, but the PSG manager said on Tuesday that he hopes it won’t be the most important game of their season.
Guardiola and Enrique played together at Barcelona and with Spain, and when Guardiola was Barca manager, the current PSG coach was in charge of the Barcelona B team, and their meeting in Paris comes at a difficult time for the two friends. Both managers have struggled in the Champions League this season, with PSG on seven points and 25th in the standings, one place outside the knockout phase playoff zone, while City are one point ahead in 22nd.
“Tomorrow is a special match, not just because of the importance for the two teams but because I will be up against a friend who I played with for many years and we crossed paths as coaches,” Enrique said ahead of Wednesday’s game. “I hope the most important match is not the one against Manchester City, I hope it will be in the next phase of the competition at a very high level with the trophy at stake. That is what I hope for.”
The PSG boss knows, however, that the penultimate game of the league phase against City could be crucial in deciding the future of both clubs in the competition. “I hope to have other more important games, but this is a special game because in the new format of the Champions League I don’t think anyone could predict that City would have this number of points ahead of match day seven,” he said. “But that is football and that is the new format. Right now we don’t know how many points we will need to qualify, nobody can say. Maybe after this match day we will know that.”
PSG have suffered losses away to Arsenal and Bayern Munich this season, but the coach sees the draw against PSV Eindhoven and defeat by Atletico Madrid, both of which came at home, as the games which have really cost them. “We should have won the games against PSV and Atletico at home. That is the reality,” Enrique said.
“On the pitch, they were two games we should have won but football isn’t as simple as that. With those five points we would already be qualifying for the next round.”
Meanwhile, Guardiola insists City will rise to the occasion in their crucial showdown against PSG after rebuilding their shattered morale with a 6-0 demolition of Ipswich.
With the top 24 clubs going through to the knockout stages – the first eight automatically reach the last 16 and the sides from ninth to 24th face a play-off – the stakes could not be higher when City travel to Paris. Fortunately for City, they were able to warm up for the blockbuster clash by recording their biggest Premier League win since thrashing Nottingham Forest by the same scoreline in 2022.
Phil Foden scored twice, while Mateo Kovacic, Erling Haaland, Jeremy Doku and James McAtee were also on target at Portman Road on Sunday. Such was their dominance, Guardiola was able to replace Foden, Haaland, Kovacic, Kevin De Bruyne and Manuel Akanji in the second half to keep them fresh for the PSG game. “After four or five nil I had my eye on Paris,” Guardiola said. “We have two finals left, by winning two we qualify, winning one there’s a big possibility. We have to get the points because we created problems ourselves, especially with Feyenoord, even the game we lost in Lisbon. But in that moment we had a lot of problems. We could not compete the way we want for many reasons. Hopefully we can continue in Paris for the next game.”
After winning the Champions League for the first time in 2023, City bowed out in the quarter-finals on penalties against Real Madrid last season. In keeping with a turbulent season that sees them trailing 12 points behind Premier League leaders Liverpool, Guardiola’s men have endured another rollercoaster ride in Europe this term.