Luis Enrique had one word to describe Gianluigi Donnarumma. “Sensationnel,” theParis Saint-Germainmanager said, switching briefly into French from his native Spanish; no translation required.
Donnarumma was the difference for PSG against Aston Villa on Tuesday night, the goalkeeper making five saves in the Champions League quarter-final second leg at Villa Park, three of them, well, sensational, as his team just about got the job done,losing 3-2 on the nighthaving been 2-0 up but advancing 5-4 on aggregate.
The pick of the bunch was probably the dive to his left to tip over a Marcus Rashford firecracker at 2-2. And yet at 3-2, there was the claw up and over to keep out Youri Tielemans’s looping header and the one-on-one block against the Villa substitute and PSG loanee Marco Asensio.
Donnarumma had no time for the Asensio narrative or the one about a Villa comeback for the ages, one to take a stellar return to Europe’s elite competition after a four decades-plus absence to a glorious new pitch. That said, it felt a little incongruous for Donnarumma to end up as the PSG story because it was not how it was meant to be, how the French champions have been cast this season, certainly since the turn of the year.
When Luis Enrique’s team reported back after the winter break, they beat Monaco in Qatar to win the Trophée des Champions, and before the trip to Villa Park their record in 2025 showed 22 wins from 24 matches. They drew with Reims in Ligue 1 and there was also theChampions Leaguelast-16 first‑leg defeat against Liverpool.
And yet even that 1-0 reverse at the Parc des Princes, which would not be an impediment to progress, was an occasion to embellish their reputation for exciting football, where control is the basis, expression and fearlessness the motifs. Towards the end of January in their penultimate group tie, PSG had shrugged off a 2-0 deficit at home against Manchester City tostorm to a 4-2 victory. The 3-1 first‑leg win against Villa was another showcase for the off‑the‑cuff talents of their attacking players.
The Villa Park return was not the game that PSG wanted, even if the opening half-hour went well, the full-backs Achraf Hakimi and Nuno Mendes getting forward to finish off lovely counters. PSG took their foot off the pedal, they lost control in midfield.
Against a Villa team with nothing to lose, they almost lost it all. From the start of the second half to about the 70th minute, PSG suffered as never before under Luis Enrique. “I don’t think this team has been so dominated by another team in that way,” he said.
Luis Enrique talked about PSG feeling “overconfident” at 2-0 and perhaps the overall experience was just a part of what you get with a young team. The 12 players that Luis Enrique used had an average age of 24.4. It was their fifth defeat of the Champions League season; they lost against Arsenal, Atlético Madrid and Bayern Munich in the league stage.
PSG have dominated domestically, wrapping up the league title and winning through to the Coupe de France final, where they will face Reims. They have yet to lose in either competition. But the Champions League is another level and it has revealed a few vulnerabilities.
The broader takeaway is that thrilling and flawed is good; jeopardy the same. It can be difficult for the neutral to warm to expensively assembled squads that bulldoze all before them, especially when they are loaded with megastar individuals. For the first time since Nasser al-Khelaifi and his Qatar Sports Investments group took a majority stake in PSG in the summer of 2011, the club has a seriously popular team.
It is because they are one in the truest sense, no more Lionel Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, the impossible-to-accommodate “three kings” as the former managerMauricio Pochettino once called them. But mainly it is because of their outlook, how they look to play.
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Make no mistake, Luis Enrique wants to hog the ball, he wants to pass the opposition to death, with Vitinha setting the tone in front of the back four. Luis Enrique is obsessed with hard work, with discipline. Remember how he dropped Ousmane Dembélé for the Arsenal game after the forward, surely the squad’s highest‑profile player, fell short of showing the team ethic that is demanded? But it is the creative licence which Luis Enrique has granted that sets this group apart.
There is an argument to say that PSG are the most watchable team in Europe at present, even in defeat over 90 minutes. It is because of how Luis Enrique encourages his players to make their moves in the one-v-ones, starting with the full‑backs who he plays daringly high and majoring on those in the front three.
There is an old-school vibe to Dembélé and Bradley Barcola, to Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Désiré Doué. In a game where structured systems stuff is taking over, PSG are an antidote. They are a team to save football from itself.
In the early days of the QSI project,Khelaifi told the Guardianthat he wanted to invest in young players, to develop PSG’s infrastructure and to market the club as an international brand. He has delivered. PSG opened a state‑of-the-art training campus last November and have pushed themselves on the fashion front, helped by a collaboration with Nike and Michael Jordan. They have stores on Oxford Street in London and Fifth Avenue in New York, among other cities.
The domestic titles have been harvested; this season’s is No 11 for QSI. But what has eluded them is the Champions League. Before their takeover, PSG had next to no pedigree in the competition, their only impact having been the bolt to the 1994-95 semi-finals with Luis Fernández’s team of George Weah, Raí and David Ginola.
PSG secured qualification back into it in QSI’s first season and they have since been an ever-present in the knockout rounds. Before this campaign, they had five last‑16 finishes, four quarter-finals, two semi-finals and one final – the defeat by Bayern in 2020.
It is fair to say that PSG’s various demises were not greatly mourned outside their fanbase, but there is a different energy around things now; an interest, an admiration. Qatar is enjoying the reflected glory. PSG edge ever closer.