Paris Saint-Germain won on penalties (1-1 on aggregate, then 1-4 on penalties) against Liverpool (Liverpool/PSG video highlights) this Tuesday at Anfield in the second leg of the Champions League 2024-2025 Round of 16. After the match, journalist Daniel Riolo spoke to RMC Sport. He praised what he sees as the evolution of PSG coach Luis Enrique.
Riolo “Now everything is clear
“There are some pretty incredible things that don’t happen by chance. A person has the right to change. Given what’s been going on for the last two months and the breaking point he reached in the autumn, when things were even tense in the dressing room… There are moments that can be a turning point in a season, clashes that serve to put everyone back on the right track.”
Gifi doesn’t do that anymore. There’s no more of that stuff. Now everything’s clear, he even takes time to make changes, he’s got his team. One crazy thing is that he started tonight as he started last week (with the same eleven), and that didn’t exist. What has Kang-In Lee become? Every time, we’d say to ourselves: ‘Oh dear, Kang-In Lee’s playing’ and we’d wonder about the line-up. For a year and a half, it was a game of finding the right composition.
Riolo “The way this player has been transformed, I think it’s great.”
Did experiment was useful to find the right team ?
No. Dembélé OK, I’ll accept that it was the coach who did it, that yes. But not so much the position as the head. Dembélé was a guy who missed everything, didn’t finish a match, sometimes had cramps in the 70th minute because he wasn’t physically prepared, he was cooked, he had a mentality that everyone criticized. Tonight, he played in the middle, more as a relay player than a striker. The way this player has been transformed, I think it’s fantastic.”
Riolo is unwilling to accept that Luis Enrique has simply built his team over the months. It takes time, it takes tests, it takes work. And yet, it’s quite logical. To have a PSG side capable of adapting, of putting in a lot of movement, of giving the opposition the runaround, a certain amount of preparation was required.
The journalist prefers to point out that the Spanish coach has stopped experimenting and is wiser. It doesn’t matter, the main thing is that PSG have a great team. This allows individual players to express themselves, and some of them shine to push the team forward at decisive moments. Ousmane Dembélé is at the peak of his career, and Gianluigi Donnarumma was essential yesterday, despite media criticism.
We could simply congratulate coach Luis Enrique and the club as a whole, there’s no need to pretend that things were done badly before and that there are finally some good choices. There was a lack of efficiency last autumn, during the construction of a fine team, more than a risk of explosion.
