Luis Enrique does not like being 3-0 up at half-time. He said so himself on the night Paris Saint-Germain went to the Etihad and scored three times in 32 minutes against Manchester City. “I don’t like going into half-time with a 3-0 lead,” he told reporters afterwards. “Most think the game is won, but it’s never the case.”
That is a strange thing to say about a 4-2 win. It is also the best single sentence for understanding what this PSG side is: the European champions, five wins into a run that has already repaired a ropey September, coached by a man who treats every comfortable lead as a trap.
On Tuesday they host Barcelona in Paris. Let’s look at how they got here and how their season has gone so far.
The one defeat
PSG lost to Monaco in early September. It is the only defeat on their record this season, and for a few weeks it carried more weight than it deserved. Monaco kept winning, PSG kept dropping points, and a side that had won the Champions League twice in a row started to look like one that had lost its edge.
Then the edge returned quickly, and it came with goals. Since the Monaco game, Luis Enrique’s team has beaten Slovan Bratislava 6-1 in the Champions League, Stade Brestois 1-0 away, Olympique Marseille 2-1, Le Mans 3-1 and Manchester City 4-2. That is five wins and 16 goals. Strasbourg on Saturday made it six wins and 19 goals. In Ligue 1, they have 14 points from seven games (four wins, two draws, and one defeat), level with Monaco on points.
The league is still a worry, because two of those seven games were draws. Meanwhile, they are shining in the Champions League. PSG have scored ten goals in two European games, and they have not played a slow one yet.
32 minutes at the Etihad
The City game showed you what Luis Enrique is building. PSG led 3-0 after 32 minutes through Désiré Doué (13), Ousmane Dembélé (15) and Vitinha (32). They did it with 46% of the ball in the first half, according to Goal’s tactical breakdown. City had 54% and did very little with it.
The detail matters, as Goal described PSG as a flexible 4-3-3 that dropped into a compact 4-5-1 the moment City entered the middle third, with Vitinha and Fabián Ruiz screening the back four. PSG let City pass the ball in harmless areas, waited for the first loose touch, then pounced with a speed that City’s midfield couldn’t track back against.
The build-up was even smarter. PSG used goalkeeper Matvey Safonov to draw City’s press, then bypassed the first line with quick vertical passes. Vitinha won the ball back and looked for Dembélé’s diagonal run or Doué’s direct surge. Warren Zaïre-Emery and Ruiz supplied the vertical thrust. Maghnes Akliouche drifted into half-spaces, pulling Marc Guéhi out of position and opening lanes for the wide men. Dembélé was told to stay wide and high, so City could never commit their full-backs to the attack.
💎🇫🇷 Luis Enrique: “Ousmane Dembélé was in the best football school at Barcelona. He already knows everything!”.
“A player who comes from Barcelona adapts to what I like in football, he understands perfectly”, says via @preums_football. pic.twitter.com/Cv3LWFVIfj
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) October 18, 2026
Maresca’s side made it worse for themselves. Their 4-2-3-1 turned into a 3-2-5 when they had the ball, with Josko Gvardiol tucking in, and the gap between their midfield and their defence was often huge. Rúben Dias and Guéhi were left exposed to direct runs. PSG’s mid-block shut out Rayan Cherki from the number ten role. Achraf Hakimi and Zaïre-Emery doubled up on Jérémy Doku. Erling Haaland barely touched the ball before the interval.
Goal’s verdict was that Luis Enrique’s team had dismantled City’s high line with a “transition machine”. It is hard to argue.
The second half, and the speech
PSG then nearly threw it away. Maresca made a triple change at half-time, bringing on Matheus Nunes, Ayyoub Bouaddi and Iliman Ndiaye for Dias, Cherki and Doku, and City became more direct. Haaland scored in the 53rd minute, Akliouche restored the three-goal cushion in the 61st, and Haaland struck again in the 75th, which made him City’s all-time leading scorer in the Champions League. The margin was kinder than the second half. City finished with 27 shots. PSG missed a penalty and hit the woodwork, and Luis Enrique brought on Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, Lucas Hernández, and Lucas Beraldo late to shut down the game in a 5-4-1.
The coach’s post-match reaction was blunt. “How proud am I? It’s hard to say because the match had very different moments,” he said. “In the first half, we showed what we want to do as a team… We suffered a lot in the second half; they deserved to score more goals. With a bit of bad luck, we could have lost this match.”
On PSG’s own website, he was warmer about his players. “Our team is incredible. It’s so courageous and looks to win every single game,” he said. Then came the caveat: “The second half is a lesson that we need to do even better.”
Dembélé, who scored, echoed that mood. “Our first half was excellent, and we quickly led 2-0,” he said. “The second half saw us take our foot off the accelerator a little and Manchester City pushed hard.”
The rest, and the rotation
Three days later Luis Enrique did what he always does and rested his best players. For the trip to Strasbourg, Hakimi, Nuno Mendes, Willian Pacho, Ruiz, Vitinha, Dembélé and Doué started on the bench. Strasbourg took the lead through Giovanni Reyna in the 17th minute. Illia Zabarnyi equalised in the 77th; Dembélé missed a penalty in the 72nd, then scored the winner in the 85th; and Doué added a third in stoppage time from a Ferran Torres pass.
🚨 𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚: Luis Enrique has RESTED all of his KEY players vs Strasbourg today, ahead of their midweek Champions League fixture vs FC Barcelona!
• Ousmane Dembélé
• Désiré Doué
• Fabian Ruiz
• Vitinha
• Nuno Mendes
• Willian Pacho
• Marquinhos
• Achraf Hakimi pic.twitter.com/Gg20kKAvuz— The Touchline | 𝐓 (@TouchlineX) October 17, 2026
It was an instructive night, because a side that can bring its stars off the bench and still win a Ligue 1 away game against opposition that led for an hour has real squad depth, and also a side whose coach is already thinking about Tuesday. Rotation as a weapon. We could also argue about how much quality PSG has, or how easy Ligue 1 is for them.
The Ferran Torres factor
One piece of the puzzle has an obvious Barcelona angle, apart from Luis Enrique, Barca’s former coach and player. Ferran Torres, who joined PSG this summer after leaving the Catalans, scored a hat-trick against Slovan Bratislava on matchday one. He has quickly become an important attacking option. He is on the Ballon d’Or shortlist, too, as are nine of his PSG teammates. But to be fair, his chances of winning it this year are quite slim.
PSG 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 get their first Ligue 1 win of the season after beating Brest 1-0 with a goal from Ferran Torres ✨ pic.twitter.com/UewOHCKIMm
— B/R Football (@brfootball) September 13, 2026
Barcelona let him go without thinking about signing a recognised striker to replace him, but just before the transfer deadline, they signed Gabriel Jesus from Arsenal. That is the story for the other feature in this series. On Tuesday, he could take the pitch against his old club, which gives the night an extra edge.
What Luis Enrique says about Barcelona
The coach has been asked about the Barcelona game several times. He keeps giving the same answer.
“PSG vs Barca next? Being the best team at this stage of the season is not the most important thing,” he said after the City game. “The most important thing is to be the best team at the end of the season.”
Dembélé was more direct about the standings. “In six days’ time we have another big match against FC Barcelona, who have the same number of points as us,” he said.
That is true. After two games each, Barcelona and PSG are both on six points, and both are near the top of the league phase, which makes this the first time all season that PSG meet a team of similar quality in Europe, with the coach who built Barcelona’s last Champions League winners now sitting on the other bench and trying to beat his old club’s present self.
PSG scored 10 in the Champions League so far, conceding 3, while Barcelona scored 9 and conceded only 2. Their game will probably be one of the most-watched matches on Tuesday.
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