The Athletic FC ⚽ is The Athletic’s daily football (or soccer, if you prefer) newsletter. Sign up to receive it directly to your inbox.
Hello! Luis Enrique put his money where his mouth was. Paris Saint-Germain are reborn.
On the way:
👊 PSG take Anfield
🤯 Raphinha’s mind-boggling stats
👋 Who is Andrea Berta?
🦂 Wicked scorpion kick
New dawn in Paris: Penalties cap ‘best match’ as coach Luis Enrique forecasts final
TNT Sports
Luis Enrique, the Paris Saint-Germain manager, loves a soundbite. He bristled last season when a journalist asked him what would happen if PSG suffered an early exit from Europe. “The sun will come out,” he shot back. “When the sun comes out in Paris, it’s marvellous.”
No surprise, then, to hear him tee up yesterday’s Champions League last-16 tie at Liverpool by telling the media: “We’re gonna do it.” A goal down after the first leg, with the Premier League leaders awaiting him at Anfield, and nothing but total confidence in the squad around him — confidence that was totally vindicated.
Advertisement
He’s an outstanding coach, Luis Enrique. Underrated, to some extent. And he has a knack of cashing the cheques his mouth writes. The Champions League got real last night and so did PSG, knocking out Liverpool at the end of the best game we’ve seen in this edition. It took a penalty shootout but PSG were worth it, playing with more energy and ambition over two legs. We might be witnessing the birth of a new force.
There was so much to unwrap at Anfield: Ousmane Dembele’s early goal to make it 1-1 on aggregate, Luis Enrique cutely throwing on penalty specialist Goncalo Ramos in time for the shootout, goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma doing his thing by saving two spot kicks with his dragon-like wingspan. Darwin Nunez had the misfortune of missing one of them — grist to the mill for those who class him as a liability. But what struck me most was PSG’s energy in extra time: pushing, probing, determined to take Liverpool to places they didn’t want to go.
The ball wouldn’t run for Arne Slot’s side, much as it failed to run for the Parisians during an extraordinary first leg last week. A coin toss shifted the shootout to the end of the pitch where PSG’s supporters were packed in tight, exactly where Luis Enrique wanted it. An away fan with a megaphone did his best to get into Nunez’s head, and seemingly succeeded.
For his part, Slot has been incredibly effusive about PSG. “It was the best game of football I’ve been involved in,” he said. As for Luis Enrique? He predicted that the winners last night would make the final, if not go one better. Frankly, we know better than to doubt him.
Trebles all round?
TNT Sports
PSG are on for a treble of domestic league title, domestic cup and European honours. It’s a recurring theme in the Champions League.
Barcelona also have three trophies in their sights after brushing aside Portugal’s Benfica, inspired by the bottomless brunch that is Raphinha. He’s got 27 goals and 19 assists across all competitions this season, including 11 and five in the Champions League. I’m struggling to see a more in-form player anywhere in the world.
Advertisement
But Inter are bubbling too. After easily putting away Feyenoord, they remain serious contenders for a treble of their own. And while it doesn’t feel like Bayern Munich have the backbone to go all the way, a 5-0 aggregate win against Bayer Leverkusen was a merciless rinsing. Alphonso Davies scored the pick of the goals for them (above). With the Madrid derby to be settled this evening, I’m trying to pick an outright tournament winner. Quite honestly, I can’t.
Catch a match
(Kick-offs ET/UK time)
Champions League: Lille vs Borussia Dortmund, 1.45pm/5.45pm — CBS, Paramount+, Fubo/TNT Sports; Arsenal vs PSV, Aston Villa vs Club Brugge, Atletico Madrid vs Real Madrid — all 4pm/8pm and Paramount+/TNT Sports.
News round-up
Arriving at Arsenal: But how much influence did Berta have in Atletico Madrid’s rise?
(Photo: David S. Bustamante/Soccrates/Getty Images)
On the face of it, any person who was central to Atletico Madrid’s post-2011 revival and survived for years in Diego Simeone’s slipstream has to possess a depth of talent. That stint of service in Spain is what lined up Andrea Berta to be Arsenal’s next sporting director.
So it interests me that Dermot Corrigan’s profile of Berta isn’t more gushing. The Italian worked as sporting director at Atletico from 2017 until this January gone, but the extent of his influence on squad building is a matter of debate. Simeone likes to be hands-on with transfers. Negotiations often fell to CEO Miguel Angel Gil Marin. Berta’s role? Less than defined, and diminished by Carlos Bucero arriving as football managing director last year.
In no way is Dermot disregarding his input, and it would be wrong to do so, but unlike another Arsenal candidate — Roberto Olabe, who will soon leave Real Sociedad — Berta could not be classed as the blood in his former club’s veins. It makes me think that having won the race to replace Edu, he won’t attempt to reinvent the wheel at the Emirates, or ruffle feathers. And given the power held by manager Mikel Arteta, that probably suits Arsenal.
Home loan: Man Utd’s new stadium a clean break but club will need to borrow cash
(Manchester United/Foster + Partners)
Those artist’s impressions of Manchester United’s proposed new stadium generated a predictable level of hilarity. To steal a line from our Nick Miller, images resembling a circus weren’t necessarily the best idea in the current climate at Old Trafford.
Nonetheless, Cirque du Soleil can only be a welcome relief from Cirque du Decay. If this all comes together — and United’s Sir Jim Ratcliffe thinks he can pull the build off in a five-year timeframe — then any sadness over leaving Old Trafford will be purely nostalgic. United’s home has been left to rot.
Advertisement
Priority No 1, though, is to claw in the cash for a project that could cost £2bn or more. This at a club who, according to Ratcliffe, scrapped free lunches for staff because they were on course to go bust. As Phil Buckingham writes here, if the project isn’t going to be paid for by the Glazer family or INEOS, some money will have to come from external, interest-bearing loans. Again, this at a club weighed down by debt.
But a clean break does make sense. It’s easier to create a 100,000-capacity arena from scratch than gradually increase Old Trafford to 87,000. The plan also gives United somewhere to play home games while the steel girders go up. They would be acquiring the second-biggest ground in Europe, behind Barcelona’s revamped Camp Nou (primed for 105,000 seats). So all well and good — as long as the sums add up.
Around The Athletic FC
And finally…
Caliente TV
I’m incredibly partial to unconventional finishes, and they don’t get much more improvised than this ballet-like overhead from Atlas’ centre-back Matheus Doria in Mexico’s Liga MX.
To avoid any sacrilege, I pinged The Athletic’s Adam ‘Cliches’ Hurrey to ask how his famous lexicon of football would describe it. “Got to go with ‘the scorpion’ there,” he replied. Quite so. In its own way, it’s as inventive as that beautiful, mesmerising flick by Lizbeth Ovalle in Mexico last week. Tequilas on us.
The amusing thing about Doria’s goal is that Atlas were 3-0 down to Tijuana when he scored. He jogged back to the halfway line without flinching or milking it. But it transpired it was the catalyst for a fightback and a 4-3 win, sealed in the 100th minute. If only he’d seen the future.
(Top photo: Ryan Crockett/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
