Better than Klopp & Guardiola  

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Paris Saint-Germain staked a claim to be the favourites for this season’s Champions League with a truly impressive performance against Liverpool in the first leg of their Round of 16 tie on Wednesday night. Although the Ligue 1 giants only won the game 2-0, Ousmane Dembele & Co. could have certainly scored two or three more goals, as they spent much of the match playing the ball around their English rivals with little difficulty. If anyone hopes to become European champions this season, they’ll likely need to beat a very impressive PSG side first.

While Wednesday’s result was certainly down to some exquisite individual performances from players like Désiré Doué, João Neves and Vitinha, it was also further proof of the impressive stranglehold Luis Enrique has over the European competition. Despite the win over Liverpool only being Enrique’s 75th game in the Champions League, the Spanish tactician has already won the tournament twice and will be aiming to make it three if his team can march all the way to the final in Budapest in just a few months.

Although Enrique may have taken something of a sabbatical from domestic football when he decided to coach the Spain national team between 2019 and 2022, his record in the Champions League remains formidable. This season’s campaign is his sixth across his time at Barcelona and now PSG and due to his success with both clubs, few managers can compete with Enrique’s record in the tournament. Across the 75 games he’s coached on Europe’s biggest stage, Enrique has won 48, drawn nine and lost just 18. That gives the 55-year-old head coach a record of 2.04 points per game in the Champions League.

As we can see in the table above, Enrique’s record puts him above some truly impressive managers in the modern game when we compare his record to theirs, since Enrique first coached in the competition. The PSG manager currently boasts a better record than Jürgen Klopp (1.95), Julian Nagelsmann (1.96), Zinédine Zidane (2.02) and even Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola, who sits just below his compatriot with a record of 2.04 points per game in the Champions League.

As such, just two managers across all of European football have bested Enrique in the Champions League since 2014: Carlo Ancelotti with an average of 2.06 and current Barca head coach Hansi Flick, who enjoys a truly impressive average of 2.28 points per game. With that in mind, it’s no real surprise that Liverpool boss Arne Slot struggled to match his counterpart’s tactics on Wednesday night and why PSG look well placed to become the first team to retain their title as European champions since Real Madrid did in 2018.