PSG boss Luis Enrique relieved to avoid ex-club Barça in UCL final

Paris Saint-Germain coach Luis Enrique is relieved to be facing Inter Milan and not his former club Barcelona in the Champions League final on May 31.

Luis Enrique, however, admitted he would have “loved” for Barça to have gone all the way had his team been eliminated.

“To be honest, playing in a Champions League final against Barcelona would have been the worst thing for me,” Luis Enrique told Cadena Cope after his team’s 2-1 win against Arsenal at the Parcs des Princes on Wednesday that saw PSG progress 3-1 on aggregate.

“If we hadn’t been there, I would have loved for Barcelona to have been there and to have won it.”

A former Barcelona player, Luis Enrique guided Barça to Champions League glory in 2015.

Barça suffered an agonising semifinal defeat to Inter on Tuesday as Hansi Flick’s side came from two goals down to lead 3-2 on the night at San Siro, 6-5 on aggregate, heading into stoppage time.

However, Francesco Acerbi’s 93rd-minute goal took the tie to extra time before Davide Frattesi struck to seal a 7-6 aggregate win for Inter.

Asked if it pained him that Barça were eliminated, Luis Enrique said: “Without a doubt, because if you tell someone that after scoring six goals in a semifinal you get knocked out, you don’t believe it. They clearly could have been in the final and should have been in the final.”

Luis Enrique is now hoping to replicate his success at Barça and guide PSG to their first European title at the Allianz Arena in what is PSG’s second Champions League final in the club’s history.

PSG lost 1-0 to Bayern Munich in 2020.

“This is an exciting project,” Luis Enrique, who is in his second season at PSG, said. “It’s very different from the one I had at Barcelona because in Barcelona I had to get a team that had already worked well to work well again. I think we achieved that comfortably.

“Here [at PSG], it’s about creating a team and, even if players leave, continuing to believe that we can turn young players into stars.”

Since losing France star Kylian Mbappé, who left PSG to join Real Madrid as a free agent last summer, Luis Enrique has built a team of young stars who have delivered.

PSG won Ligue 1 last month and can now complete the treble if they beat Reims in the Coupe de France final on May 24 before facing Inter Milan in the Champions League final in Munich a week later.

“We now have many stars in the team and, in that sense, I feel very good and very happy,” Luis Enrique said.