In his second job as a senior coach, Luis Enrique wanted to be able to look down on his players. Literally.
He thought the club who had offered him a first chance to manage in Spain’s first division, Celta Vigo, had insufficient aerial cameras to monitor practice sessions, so he asked that an observation tower be constructed next to the main training pitch.
Up the scaffolding he would climb, “to get a view of the guys from another angle,” he explained. Another benefit was that, seated high above his subjects, he left his players in no doubt who was at the top of the decision-making hierarchy, who was boss.
Ten years on from his season at Celta, Luis Enrique is feeling his way into a job notorious for eroding the status of the head coach: Paris Saint-Germain, where his three immediate predecessors have found that the authority of the role diminishes ever more rapidly.
Christophe Galtier, sacked earlier this month, lasted less than a year, Mauricio Pochettino 18 months. In that descending scale of longevity Thomas Tuchel’s 912-day reign until late 2020 looks epochal.
So far in Luis Enrique’s opening 22 days of a three-year contract he has learnt painfully that, as a PSG head coach, you can feel small when caught between the twin towers of PSG’s power base: on the one hand, the club president Nasser Al Khelaifi, boss of how the club’s Qatari owners manage their large investment; and, on the other, Kylian Mbappe, the player to whom the largest single tranche of the club’s salaries are channelled.
As PSG continue their pre-season preparations in Japan, Mbappe is effectively up for sale as long as he continues to refuse the contract extension to 2025 the club have offered him. And he’s well out of sight of any observational tower the new head coach might want to survey his playing resources from.
Mbappe is in Paris, not selected for the tour of Japan, where PSG meet Cerezo Osaka on Friday, and on to South Korea.
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Kylian Mbappe is surrounded by young supporters at the end of a ceremony to celebrate him becoming Paris Saint-Germain's all-time top scorer with his 201st goal for the club in their 4-2 win against FC Nantes at the Parc des Princes Stadium in Paris on March 4, 2023. AFP -
Kylian Mbappe lifts the trophy to mark his achievement in becoming PSG's all-time top scorer. AFP -
Kylian Mbappe poses with a trophy in front of supporters after he became Paris Saint-Germain's all-time top scorer. AP -
Kylian Mbappe poses with a trophy and children at the end of a ceremony after he became Paris Saint-Germain's all-time top scorer. AFP -
Kylian Mbappe raises a trophy during a ceremony after he became Paris Saint-Germain's all-time top scorer. AFP -
Kylian Mbappe celebrates with a trophy after scoring his record 201st goal for PSG. EPA -
Kylian Mbappe celebrates after scoring the fourth goal against Nantes, which made him PSG's all-time top goalscorer. AFP -
Kylian Mbappe celebrates with Timothee Pembele after scoring PSG's fourth goal against Nantes. AFP -
Kylian Mbappe celebrates after scoring the fourth goal for PSG against Nantes. AFP -
Lionel Messi congratulates Kylian Mbappe after the French forward scored PSG's fourth goal against Nantes. AP
The friction between Mbappe and his employers grows each day. Al Khelaifi has stated he will not allow Mbappe to let his contract run down to next summer, which would allow the player to leave without a transfer fee – most likely to Real Madrid, who have long courted Mbappe and where the striker, 24, has consistently indicated he would like to spend a portion of his peak years.
A bid of €300m for him from Al Hilal of Riyadh has been accepted, but Mbappe has told his advisers that, if he moves this summer, it should be to a club in Europe. He is publicly maintaining he intends to honour the remaining season on his PSG contract.
For Luis Enrique, the stand-off is an enormous inconvenience and a grave medium-term concern. For the last five seasons, Mbappe has been PSG’s leading goalscorer, the most potent weapon in a team striving – not yet successfully – to claim a first Champions League title.
As things stand, with 17 days left until the opening of PSG’s defence of their Ligue 1 title, the new coach has no clarity on whether he needs to design an alternative tactical plan to the tried-and-tested priority of supplying passes for Mbappe to run on to.
PSG have signed some bright attacking talent, in Marco Asensio, who played for Luis Enrique during his time coaching Spain, and Lee Kang-in, the South Korean, though neither have Mbappe’s goalscoring record.
Mbappe is irreplaceable, peerless in the modern game at sprinting towards goal and finishing. If he is sold this summer – and Madrid, the player’s ideal destination, have made no bid – the vast fee would be put towards a high-class replacement. Yet the longer the uncertainty goes on, the less chance PSG have of finding that replacement in the transfer market.
Luis Enrique’s thoughts? They are shared only with his close circle. The new head coach has been steered away from giving any interviews or pre-match conferences during the tour of Japan and South Korea because they would be dominated by the Mbappe question.
As for his capacity to simultaneously prepare a Plan A – for a PSG without Mbappe – and a Plan B – for a system with Mbappe still present – or a Plan C – for a new figurehead striker bought in – at least there is an encouraging precedent.
When Luis Enrique took over as Barcelona’s head coach, after his year up the scaffold tower at Celta, Barca’s expensive centre-forward, Luis Suarez, was serving a long ban for biting an opponent during that summer’s World Cup.
Suarez could not play until October, or even train with his new coach until well into August. But Luis Enrique managed the situation well enough. Suarez ended up contributing 25 goals to Barcelona’s Treble that season.
