The press conference held by the Paris Saint-Germain administration, headed by Nasser Al-Khulaifi, to present the able Spanish coach, Luis Enrique, with several messages worth stopping and contemplating, especially with the president and coach’s assertion that the club will witness a new stage.
Perhaps the matter within the Parisian club will not stop at just a new stage of planning, as what appears to be in preparation in the vicinity of the Princes’ Park is a new project, completely different in essence and content from what preceded it, as the main strategy now changes from building around one or more players, to building around the coach.
Since the summer of 2017, Saint-Germain has begun a new project aimed at the team winning the Champions League title, and this sports project was built around one player, Neymar Jr., who at that time cost the Parisian treasury 222 million euros, the value of the penalty clause in his contract with Barcelona.
Although the club assigned in the same period the star Kylian Mbappe from Monaco, and he was only 18 years old at the time, he did not pull the rug from under Neymar’s feet and turn into the main piece in the club’s project, only after a season or two, and it can be said that since 2019 he has become Building around Mbappe, not Neymar.
The third construction certainly began in 2021, when Paris contracted with the Argentine icon Lionel Messi, but it was not a total planning to rely on the flea, because Mbappe's star was shining more and more, while Neymar's glow dimmed little by little, and perhaps we can say that the third project was based on Messi. Mbappe, then to a lesser extent on Neymar.
What left the impression that the club was adopting a strategy of relying on the player’s project was the management’s choice of coaches that could not be classified in the first category in Europe, especially in the last year when Christophe Galte was chosen, and it was a surprising and strange choice.
But it seems that the Paris administration has now reached a final conviction that the coach should be the cornerstone in building the sports project, after witnessing the successes of Pep Guardiola with Manchester City, and his achievement of the Champions League title after two attempts in which he reached the final, as well as in Liverpool the experience of Jurgen Klopp was kidnapped. All eyes were on Europe, and the German coach was able to raise the double-eared cup, and he came close to repeating the achievement more than once.
Perhaps what happened in Chelsea, and Thomas Tuchel's success in achieving the European title one season after qualifying with Saint-Germain for the final match and losing to Bayern Munich, was a warning to Al-Khulaifi's management that he was leading his projects in the wrong direction.
However, why are we now certain that the club's orientations have changed and differed? Very simply, because what happened in the press conference is a clear message to Mbappe, that the basis for the new project will be the coach, and this was stated by Enrique himself, and he was accompanied by some confidence mixed with arrogance, when he said that he is the right man for the club's project in the next stage.
We cannot ignore Enrique's answer at the conference about his position on Mbappe, as it was completely revealing. He closed the issue by saying that the goal would be to create a strong list of players, and this is another message that the priority will be for the group and not the individual, even if it is Mbappe himself.
Despite Al-Khulaifi’s confirmation of the club’s desire to renew Mbappe’s contract, this is not true, because he knows full well that Kylian will not renew his contract again, and that he cannot wait to play for Real Madrid, but that was in fact an announcement from Enrique and the club’s president, about Mbappe’s departure. However, the purpose behind these statements is to urge the player to leave for a fee this summer, instead of terminating his contract and leaving for free next summer.