From our special correspondent in Dortmund,
Luis Enrique’s team compositions are a bit like Advent calendars. A little novelty each time we open a box to maintain the element of surprise, and too bad if we come across chocolate with red fruit liqueur, equivalent in our mind to the 4-2-4 kamikaze mode imagined in Newcastle. The Spanish laboratory technician has accustomed us since the start of the season to never being where we expect him to be at the start of the matches. He apparently takes pleasure in defying the logic that seemed to emerge from previous outings, and on the morning of the crucial meeting for the European future of PSG on the pitch in Dortmund, we cannot help but wonder what a daring idea ( or reckless, depending on how you look at it) may well have crossed his tortured mind.
The desire to be an actor in matches
Questioning is not free. Beyond the drowning in Newcastle (4-1), which is the most emblematic case, we think of these little surprises scattered from right to left, of Vitinha left winger against AC Milan, of Soler full-back against Strasbourg or Le Havre, to Ramos completely revived against Monaco then put in the closet immediately, or to Danilo who was not really aware that he would return directly as a starter for the return against the English after a month without playing. Everything is not to be thrown away, of course, Vitinha has been among the best Parisians since the start of the season, with Hakimi, who we have often seen happily integrated into the heart of the game. It’s just that the whole thing seems a a bit crazy, without real continuity, with players who sometimes seem disoriented.
Finally, if we think that, it must be because we don’t understand anything. Luis Enrique, who hate long time journalists (his failed transfer from Real to Barça in 1996), rarely misses an opportunity to remind us that the only one who can grasp what he is putting in place is him. Not unhappy with his team despite two mishaps against Newcastle, disillusioned by the first 25 minutes during the 3-0 victory against AC Milan at the Parc, irritated by Mbappé on a day of hat-trick against Reims, the Spaniard is a man of counter -foot, who likes to be considered a real player in matches. Even if it means doing too much and playing against your camp, as Pep Guardiola was criticized after his tactical moves as improbable as they were disastrous in the Champions League with Manchester City?
Energy, commitment and honesty
“He is part of this lineage,” believes Julien Mette, young coach (41 years old) passionate about tactics, former coach of Djibouti. For him, a good coach is a coach who makes a tactical move that no one has seen. We are no longer in the era of Mourinho management, but in that of perpetual innovation, which is also what Nagelsmann (the German coach, former Bayern coach) is looking for, for example. Luis Enrique totally gets into this, but his stubbornness can sometimes lose him. » Like with Spain at the last World Cup, for example.
In the book The Metodo Luis Enrique, authors Lluis Lainz and Marti Perarnau provide elements that shed light on the character. And to better understand his way of managing, a subtle mix between his strong character and the way he was raised in football. One of his trainers when he passed his coaching diplomas, interviewed in the book, said of him in particular: “There are three important aspects in the personality of Luis Enrique: great energy, which is reflected in each work he accomplishes, a very high level of commitment and a visceral attachment to honesty. He defends his ideas until the ultimate consequences. »
A whole and stubborn man, the native of Gijon comes (like Guardiola) from a school of thought which wants the coach to be a true master tactician, called to leave a mark in the history of the game (Leo Beenhakker, Rinus Michels , Johan Cruyff, Louis van Gaal, Carles Rexach). His presentation press conference when he took charge of Barça in the summer of 2014 constitutes a formidable manifesto of his vision: “The diagrams are tactical drawings in which the players will evolve depending on what happens. happens on the field, of what we want. A line of three, four or five could suddenly appear, depending on our interests, he explained. I want you to be able to see things that make you say that the team is working hard and wants to play the game, whether it’s home or away. »
In other words, the boss’s paw must be sensitive. Hence a wide variety of approaches and a significant turnover in each meeting, even if the scheme and the players chosen in the previous one were satisfactory. A trademark registered from his beginnings at the head of the Barça reserve in 2008 and found everywhere he went afterwards, at Roma, at Celta Vigo, and even more on the bench of the great FC Barcelona, where he had to find a way to distance themselves from the legacy left by Guardiola.
“He never wanted to accept that Totti was more important than him”
It never happened without clashes, Luis Enrique not hesitating to mark his territory with strong choices which did not help him to live in a peaceful climate. Two episodes to illustrate this fault: the exit of the emblem Francesco Totti during a barrage of access to the Europa League (ultimately lost) upon his taking office in Rome in 2011, which strained relations in the locker room and with the supporters, and the sidelining of Lionel Messi and Neymar at the kick-off of a match against Real Sociedad at the very beginning of January 2015, with a defeat leading (more or less directly) to the departures of the sports director Andoni Zubizarreta and his deputy Carles Puyol.
Here we enter into the complexity of the character. This desire to have control over everything and to be the only one sticking out can be seen as a sign of unfailing determination, respect for norms and rules, or as the expression of an oversized ego. “He exudes both this strong conviction that it is only with the work and commitment of everyone that the objectives set in his project will be achieved, and sometimes allows himself to be carried away by impulses or ideas that are too rigid,” thus write Lainz and Perarnau about it. Before quoting a former Roma player who didn’t really appreciate his methods: “He never wanted to accept that Totti was more important than him and even than the Pope here. »
The problem in all this is that the Spaniard has never been able to count on the media to explain his vision of things, which a large majority of technicians nevertheless consider to be brilliant in many aspects. Where some see these permanent changes as trial and error, we can on the contrary detect a perfectly marked path to excellence, where everything is anticipated and calculated.
His famous turnover thus fulfills three functions, according to the two journalists who investigated his method: masking the sidelining of certain players for lack of involvement in training (which apparently happens more often than we think ), give everyone the opportunity to develop on the ground the concepts developed during the sessions and finally measure the efforts so that the team is running at full speed in April-May, when titles and trophies must be sought.
“Perhaps illegible for supporters, but also for opponents”
“It’s a question of management more than tactics,” says Julien Mette. At PSG, the changes are mainly made on the attack line. There is strong competition, perhaps for Ramos for example he says to himself after Monaco that it is good, he is confident, so he decides to play Lee Kang-In and Barcola in the following matches so that they too find it and integrate. His goal is to have his entire armada at the top to become invincible, and to be unpredictable. It may be illegible for the supporters, but then it is also illegible for the opponents. When you play PSG, you never know what you might get. »
We should therefore only see in this first part of PSG’s season, marked by excitement in the group stage of the Champions League unprecedented under QSI, a period of experimentation to ride on everyone in a few months. With the risk, not negligible this Wednesday morning, that it will be in the Europa League. Everyone can’t wait to see Luis Enrique’s choices so that this doesn’t happen. Nasser Al-Khelaïfi traveled to Dortmund to open the small box for December 13 of his personal Advent calendar himself.