David Beckham has said that Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser Al-Khelaifi told him Luis Enrique was so committed to the job that he slept at the training ground for “virtually the first year” at the club.
PSG booked their spot in a second consecutive Champions League final with the perfect away performance against Bayern Munich on Wednesday night.
After the hustle and bustle of the first leg, in which PSG held a slender 5-4 lead from the Parc des Princes, this was a performance that showed their maturity.
Scoring after just three minutes through Ballon d’Or winner Ousmane Dembélé, PSG then sat back and made things almost impossible for Bayern to click into their usual gear.
By the time Harry Kane scored four minutes into stoppage time, it was too little, too late, the job was done, PSG won 6-5 on aggregate.
Now they have just over three weeks to prepare to defend their Champions League crown, after beating Inter 5-0 to take their first title a year ago.
But getting to this point is not simply down to the riches they possess.
PSG have tried it the ‘Galacticos’ way — they once had a front three of Neymar, Kylian Mbappé and Lionel Messi — but the best they could do then was reach the round of 16.
Reaching a second successive final was down to the manager and the sheer commitment he has brought to the Parisian giants since his appointment in 2023.
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And there is no clearer sign of that being the case than what Beckham, who spent his final half a season as a player with PSG, revealed on the subject.
Speaking on CBS’ Beckham and Friends Live, he said: “That’s how Luis Enrique has built them for the last few years and he has built this team that are so together.
“I spoke to the president Nasser [Al-Khelaifi] at PSG and he said for the first year of Luis Enrique going, he virtually slept every night at the new training facility, working on how he wants the team to look, how he wants the team to play, who he wants, where are we going to go, what the future looks like.
“The president Nasser just said he has never seen anything like it.
“His work ethic and what he wants from his team, he wants them all on a level par, all to want the same thing, bringing these young players through.
“But he also wants players that are just going to run and not stop and that is what he has got, that is what he has built.”
PSG finally won the thing that had evaded them since Al-Khelaifi took over as president in October 2011 when beating Inter so comfortably last year.
They now have the opportunity to make history, with only Real Madrid ever defending their Champions League crown, something they did twice in 2016-17 and 2017-18.
It is unlikely it will come as easily as last time against Arsenal but with Enrique and his tireless work ethic at the helm, anything is possible.
