Joao Neves interview: ‘The less time they have to breathe, the better’

Joao Neves might look like a choirboy but get him talking about football for long enough and his cherubic features are quickly betrayed by something a little more devilish.

He has been speaking in engaging fashion about Paris Saint-Germain’s remarkable and potentially historic season, the team’s spectacular transformation under Luis Enrique, the wobbly moments against Aston Villa in the Champions League quarter-final second leg and the challenge that Arsenal will pose in the semi-finals.

But it is a question about tackling that makes his eyes light up.

For all of Neves’ undoubted qualities as a creator, he is every bit as effective when his team do not have the ball. The 20-year-old Portugal international tops the standings for tackles in this season’s Champions League with 45, according to Opta, which is more than any midfielder has made in the competition since Casemiro with Real Madrid in the 2017-18 campaign. As countless direct opponents have learnt to their cost, stretching back to his formative steps as a footballer in the Benfica youth teams, you underestimate the pint-sized midfielder at your peril.

Luis Enrique instructs his players to press their opponents aggressively the moment possession is lost. It has become one of PSG’s trademarks: midfielders swarming around their hapless adversaries and shutting off their oxygen supply, wingers flying in from the flanks like the two velociraptors you didn’t even know were there, full-backs sprouting up from the turf like demonic tendrils and dragging their prey down to the depths below.

As one of the two more advanced players in PSG’s central midfield trio, ahead of his compatriot Vitinha and alongside Spain international Fabian Ruiz, it often falls to Neves to lead the team’s press. It is a responsibility that he clearly relishes.

“It’s very good to attack, but the feeling of taking the ball from your opponent…” he says, trailing off with a grin.

“A lot of players don’t get it, but the feeling is: ‘We don’t have the ball, so we have to recover it’. Even when you are attacking, you have to think: ‘If we lose the ball, what can I do?’ That part of the game, a lot of people and a lot of players don’t think it’s important, but if you want to spend more time attacking, you have to recover the ball if you lose it.

“In those five to 10 seconds when you lose the ball, you have to give 100, 120 per cent, because it’s the best way to attack again. For the team we are playing against, it’s very difficult if they recover the ball and then lose the ball. So that part of the game is very satisfying to do.”

Being part of such a well-coordinated press, does he occasionally sense a degree of frustration — perhaps even panic — among his opponents? Another smile. “Yeah,” he says. “The less time they have to breathe, the better for us!

“Luis Enrique wants a team that gives 100 per cent in the attacking moments and 120 per cent in the defensive moments. That’s why I’m here and why I’m enjoying it so much.”

Things clicked between Neves and Luis Enrique from their first phone conversation last summer, which took place shortly before the midfielder put pen to paper on a five-year contract as part of a transfer that could cost PSG up to €70million (£59.5m; $79.8m). “He told me that he wanted a team that defended and attacked with 11 players,” Neves says. “I loved what he said to me.”

The feeling, it is safe to say, is mutual. “His qualities match our ideas with the ball and our defensive capabilities,” the PSG head coach said during a press conference in February. “It’s what we’re looking for: players who are good with the ball and good in defence.”

Neves has started all but one of PSG’s 14 Champions League games to date this season and played almost every minute of both the win over Liverpool in the last 16 and the 5-4 aggregate defeat of Villa in the quarter-finals, only ceding his place to Goncalo Ramos ahead of the penalty shootout in the return leg at Anfield.

Such is Luis Enrique’s confidence in Neves that he has occasionally deployed him at full-back, which is where he lined up in last week’s 1-1 draw at Nantes. Having fully assimilated the coach’s very precise conception of the game, they are assignments that Neves has generally fulfilled with ease.

“He gives me a lot of information,” says Neves, who sits leaning forward, his forearms resting on his thighs, on a low white chair at the Campus PSG training centre.

“Now I can play centre-back, winger, full-back, midfielder, striker and you don’t feel the difference because every single player knows what the other positions do. In training, we do a lot of changing (positions) on the pitch. Sometimes I play as a full-back who comes into midfield. It might not seem important, but it’s very important. They seem like small things, but in the end, it’s a lot.

“We have a lot of ball possession in every single game, so I might be in the line-up as a full-back, but I end up more of a winger or a midfielder. The only thing I might have to worry about is how I can defend, but I’ve got Marquinhos right next to me telling me what to do or what to do better.

“Sometimes the coach calls me into his office to show me some images — what I did wrong, what I did well. He knows it’s not my first position, but he’s very comprehensive and I like the way he does things.”

The fruit of PSG’s work on the training ground is a team in which the players appear capable of switching positions at will, which has turned the newly crowned French champions into a whirling dervish of a side where the danger can arrive from almost anywhere. Although Neves concedes that it took him some time to get his head around some of Luis Enrique’s tactical ideas for when the team are in possession, he says the result is that he and his team-mates are now capable of executing complex attacking manoeuvres without even thinking.

“We work on that,” he says in response to a question about the team’s positional interchange. “You just have to play with your team-mates, see what they’re doing, what we have to do. We have places on the pitch where there always has to be someone there. And if there’s no one there, you might be the closest one to do that role.

“In the beginning, it’s a little bit weird because sometimes you’re close to the ball and you’re giving a passing line, but it’s not for you, so you have to go away and find another space. In the end, it’s enjoyable because you play in relation to your team-mates.

“Sometimes we score a goal, and you are not involved in the goal. There could be five passes before the goal, and you don’t play any of them, but if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do, that doesn’t happen. Sometimes the fans see a goal and they don’t see your involvement in it, but you have an important role in the goal.

Neves has shone for PSG since he joined the club (Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Images)

“In the end, what matters is that what we do here produces something they can enjoy.”

Each sparkling PSG performance has earned them admirers outside of their own fans. They have become a fun team to watch – are they a fun team to play in?

“When you’re playing, you have a little bit of fun, but I think the best part is when you finish the game,” says Neves, who was speaking before PSG’s 3-1 home defeat by Nice on Friday. “When you’re playing, you’re not focused on whether you’re having fun or not. You’re focused on doing your best, making the best choices, and doing the best thing for the team. But at the end, you remember what you did and it’s: ‘Yeah, I had fun out there.’”

Thoughts of fun could scarcely have been further from Parisian minds at Villa Park, when the home side’s spirited reaction temporarily threatened to sweep PSG out of the competition.

Having fallen 2-0 down on the night and 5-1 down on aggregate, Villa roared back through goals from Youri Tielemans, John McGinn and Ezri Konsa. Had Gianluigi Donnarumma not saved brilliantly from Tielemans, Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio and had Willian Pacho not produced an extraordinary stoppage-time block to thwart Ian Maatsen, PSG would have found themselves in serious trouble.

It was precisely the kind of test that has provoked calamitous Champions League collapses from older, more experienced PSG sides. Neves believes successfully weathering the storm will stand a young team in good stead.

“I think we played well overall,” he says. “At 2-0 up, we lost control of the match a bit. I think it will serve as a lesson to us moving forward. We can’t relax in any game, even for a minute, in a competition like the Champions League. Now we’re through, we can learn from it and use it to improve.”

Neves does not need telling what dangerous opposition Arsenal will be, having played in PSG’s one-sided 2-0 defeat at the Emirates Stadium back in October during the competition’s league phase. Although PSG now look a very different side, having been transformed in part by Luis Enrique’s decision to redeploy Ousmane Dembele as a false nine, their No 87 knows they will face a stern examination of their credentials in Tuesday’s first leg.

“I think the most positive thing Arsenal have is the collective, like us,” he says. “It will be a very good football game. I think they are maybe more physical and we are perhaps better with the ball — in my opinion. But they have their strengths, we have our strengths.

“What we want to do is defend with the ball in their half of the pitch. Because having the ball is the best way to defend.”

Although he is reluctant to single out individuals — “They have a lot of very good, world-class players, so I cannot choose one” — the praise springs from his lips regardless. On David Raya: “I love the way he uses his feet to improve Arsenal’s play.” On Declan Rice’s sensational free-kick double against Real Madrid: “I love football, so I was really happy to watch those two goals.”

Asked about the opposing midfielders who have caused him the most problems this season, his thoughts immediately turn to Mikel Arteta’s men. “Arsenal, for sure,” he says, his jaw tightening ever so slightly. “One of the best teams. The midfield — (Martin) Odegaard, Declan Rice, (Thomas) Partey (the Ghanaian will be suspended for Tuesday’s first leg). Amazing players.”

While he does not watch football obsessively in his free time, Neves says he remains attentive to what the world’s best players are doing — and not least when it comes to areas of his game where he feels he can improve. In his case, despite reasonably healthy tallies of five goals and eight assists in all competitions, it is his contribution in the final third.

“For me, for passing into the final third, you have Joshua Kimmich,” he says. “He’s an experienced player, a talented player, world-class. For scoring, having an eye for goal, you have (Jude) Bellingham and (Jamal) Musiala. They are more comfortable in that kind of position on the pitch. I’m a little bit stressed when I’m there! So I have to improve a lot.”

Neves is full of praise for head coach Luis Enrique (Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Images)

Neves has eschewed the bright lights of the French capital for the suburbs outside Paris and admits that he is happy to lead a quiet life in the company of his family, his friends and his girlfriend, Portuguese actress Madalena Aragao. “I’m the kind of person who really enjoys being calm and just doing my own thing,” he says.

Although he still occasionally finds himself pining for his native Tavira in the Algarve, a game of foot volley on the beach with friends, or a steaming bowl of the Portuguese salt cod stew known as bacalhau, he is embracing Parisian life. “I almost always eat a croissant in the morning,” he confesses. “You have to!”

Like many of the other foreign players in PSG’s squad, he has quickly gotten to grips with the language of his new home. He conducts this interview in English, but he converses freely in French with the club’s press officer.

“When I arrived here, everyone was talking to me and I would think in English,” he says. “Now, my first thought is in French, which is really good. I love French. I really like to learn, to understand and to speak it. I have a friend who’s French, so he always talks to me in French to push me a little bit. I’m doing well, I think.”

Soon, the Champions League anthem will be ringing in his ears again. It conjures up memories of watching Benfica in European action at the Estadio da Luz or following the history-hunting exploits of his most celebrated footballing compatriot — and now international team-mate — Cristiano Ronaldo.

He has not yet dared to imagine how it might feel to hoist the famous trophy above his head in Munich on 31 May, but as the teams left in the competition thin out, he knows he is moving closer and closer to a potential date with football history.

“It’s the first time I’m in the semi-finals, so I’m very lucky already,” says Neves, who only made his senior debut for Benfica in January 2023. “I’ve been playing professional football for two and a half years, so for me to be here is already an achievement.

“I don’t picture myself lifting the trophy, but I guess it’s something that could happen. I’m here, and we have two games to get to the final. If you see it’s only three games, 90 minutes… Football is very quick.”

As his breathless opponents can testify only too readily, when Joao Neves is on your tail, it most certainly is.

(Photos: PSG; design Eamonn Dalton)

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