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Luis Enrique hoping 'special' Man City tie is not season defining for PSG
Luis Enrique is hopeful that Paris Saint-Germain's Champions League clash with Manchester City on Wednesday will not be their most important game of the season.
The match at the Parc des Princes will see Luis Enrique reunite with Pep Guardiola, with the pair having worked at Barcelona together both as players and managers.
But the encounter comes with significance, with PSG and City having struggled in this year's competition and at risk of failing to reach the knockout stages.
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The Parisiens find themselves 25th in the 36-team standings having managed just seven points from their six games, while the Citizens are a point ahead in 22nd.
This will be the fifth meeting between PSG's Luis Enrique and City’s Guardiola, with both winning two games each in their Champions League encounters.
However, along with Jurgen Klopp (two), Luis Enrique is one of only two managers to have beaten Guardiola by three or more goals on multiple occasions (3-0 in May 2015 and 4-0 in October 2016, both in charge of Barcelona).
"Tomorrow is a special match, not just because of the importance between the two teams but because I will be up against a friend who I have played with for many years, and we crossed paths as coaches," Luis Enrique told reporters ahead of Wednesday's game.
"I hope the most important match is not the one against Manchester City. I hope it will be in the next phase of the competition at a very high level with the trophy at stake."
— Paris Saint-Germain (@PSG_English) January 20, 2025
Luis Enrique, however, knows that the penultimate game of PSG's league phase could be crucial in deciding the futures of both clubs in the competition.
The Parisiens last failed to get beyond the first phase of the Champions League in 2004-05, while for City, that last happened back in 2012-13.
"I hope to have other more important games, but this is a special game because in the new format of the Champions League I don't think anyone could predict that City would have this number of points ahead of match day seven," he said.
"That is football and that is the new format. Right now we don't know how many points we will need to qualify. Nobody can say. Maybe after this match we will know that."
PSG have suffered defeats away to Arsenal and Bayern Munich this season, but Luis Enrique believes their draw against PSV Eindhoven and defeat to Atletico Madrid at the Parc des Princes have cost them the most.
They have lost three of their last five Champions League home matches (W1 D1), as many as in their previous 17 games at the Parc des Princes (W11 D3), while Luis Enrique is the only PSG manager to lose as many as three home games in the competition.
"We should have won the games against PSV and Atletico at home. That is the reality," Luis Enrique said.
"On the pitch, they were two games we should have won but football isn't as simple as that. With those five points we would already be qualifying for the next round."
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