Into his new season as Paris Saint-Germain coach, Luis Enrique compared Eibar’s long ball football to Xavi Hernández’s Barcelona and took out his frustration on the latter’s style.
In last season’s Champions League quarterfinals, PSG lost 3-2 to Barça in the first leg but managed to pull off a shocking comeback with a 4-1 win in the second leg at Barcelona’s Olympic Stadium.
“They aren’t a dominant team and they are not a good team defensively, either,” he said. “They defend with bodies but they don’t have quality in defence.”
The words changed after Luis Enrique after losing the first game at the Parc des Princes.
“It’s a lie to say Barça were better, that’s completely false,” he said in his analysis of the La Liga side, who he played for and later coached between 2014 and 2017. “They played long balls- Ter Stegen broke the record for long passes — I think it was 24. They play like Eibar. It was all long balls. Call it the third man if you’re a fan of Xaxi.”
Moreover, the tie had its main focus on the two former teammates. In the press conference, Luis Enrique said before the first leg that he enjoys Barcelona’s style of play much better than Xavi.
The documentary shifted the lens towards Luis Enrique ahead of the return leg where he encouraged Kylian Mbappé to pierce through the defense, holding a private meeting with the French forward to explain the importance of the play,
“You have to be a leader,” he told Mbappé. “You have to help us. Defend like a son of a b—-, lead by example, press … and we will be a f—ing machine.”
However, PSG went through but was eliminated by Borussia Dortmund in the semi-final.
A week before the documentary’s release this week, Luis Enrique called the clash with Barçelona “horrible”. Things also took a sharp turn as he hopes to not face his old club again in his managerial career. The Spanish manager won nine trophies during his spell with the Catalan giants, including the 2014-15 Treble.
“They called my agent Ivan de la Peña,” he explained. “I said to him: ‘Ask them what happens if Xavi wins LaLiga and the Copa, are they going to sack him?’ I already knew the answer.”
These were not the words we expected to hear, but let’s see what Xavi has to say.
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