Paris Saint-Germain hosted Chelsea on Wednesday in the first leg of their Champions League Round of 16 tie and secured a 5-2 victory. Following the match, Luis Enrique, the club’s manager, spoke to PSG TV about his players’ performance.
Luis Enrique: “We are a resilient team”
“What an atmosphere, it was incredible! The fans are incredible. I saw the tifos on screen before the match from the dressing room, what a feeling as a manager! I want to tell my players: enjoy playing in this stadium, in this atmosphere, with this confidence you can feel in difficult moments.
It’s so incredible that this victory is for them. It’s a victory for our players too because even if we’re not as precise as we’d like, we’re fighters and we have an incredible mentality. We are a resilient team, that’s the word! We are resilient, all the time.”
Luis Enrique: “We are capable of winning this second leg.”
“We saw that Chelsea have the level, a very high level. That’s why they won so much last season, and we know them very well. The second leg? I have no doubt it will be a close and difficult match, like today’s. But we’re not going to London to try and defend a result, nothing like that.
Our mentality is to try and win the match, to attack, and to deserve to win because when you think about defending a result, it doesn’t work. I can assure you that we will try to do that. We are capable of winning this second leg.”
A great victory for the capital club, which has almost secured qualification after this first leg. Obviously, nothing is decided yet, but winning a Champions League round of 16 first leg by three goals remains a remarkable performance and is more than positive for the rest of the competition. It was difficult to imagine PSG taking the lead at halftime as they did.
Nevertheless, it must be said that we finally saw the Parisians tonight at the level they displayed throughout the second half of last season. This performance is undoubtedly reassuring and will bring a great deal of confidence to the squad. They will obviously need to confirm this in the return leg, but there are many positive signs after such a resounding victory against a club fresh from winning the World Cup.
