PSG coach Luis Enrique is happy not to face his former club Barcelona in the Champions League final after dumping Arsenal out in the semi-final.
Barcelona suffered a 7-6 aggregate defeat to Inter Milan in the other semi-final on Tuesday to crash out of the competition.
While PSG recorded a 3-1 aggregate win over Arsenal to advance to the final of the competition.
Enrique was relieved to avoid Barcelona in the final on May 31.
He said: “To be honest, playing in a Champions League final against Barcelona would have been the worst thing for me. If we hadn’t been there, I would have loved for Barcelona to have been there and to have won it.”
Enrique represented Barcelona as a player between 1996 and 2004, and also returned as a manager between 2014, and 2017, winning an historic treble in 2015.
The Spanish manager is hoping to replicate the feat at PSG after leading them to their first final since 2020.
Enrique said: “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.”
“We now have many stars in the team and, in that sense, I feel very good and very happy,” Luis Enrique concluded.
Enrique has led PSG to the Ligue 1 title, and the French Cup this season, and they will be hoping to add the Champions League to the list on May 31 when they take on Inter Milan in the final.
