The PSG manager wants a third European crown in a row. He said so out loud, days before the two fixtures most likely to derail it.

“We’ve won it twice in a row, but that’s no reason to stop. We’re built to play in the Champions League,” Luis Enrique told reporters ahead of PSG’s trip to the Etihad.

The target is explicit: match, and then surpass, the only club ever to win three consecutive European Cups in the Champions League era. Real Madrid did it from 2016 to 2018, closing the run by beating Liverpool in the Kyiv final. No one has matched them since.

“Six, seven or eight teams” in the hunt

Enrique is not framing PSG as inevitable. Asked where his side sit in the European pecking order, he was blunt about the field.

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“There are six, seven or eight teams capable of winning this Champions League. We’re one of them, but it’ll be tough and we’re not the clear favorites,” he said.

The acknowledgment comes with his own job locked in. He signed a contract extension through 2030 earlier this year, and he said the new deal has sharpened, not softened, what is being asked of him.

“I’ve extended my contract and now I’m under even more pressure to show that I’m ready to carry on and that I still want to win many more trophies,” Enrique said.

13 trophies and a 6-1 opening statement

Since arriving in July 2023, Enrique has won 13 major honors with PSG, including back-to-back Champions League titles and three Ligue 1 crowns. The title defense this season opened with a 6-1 demolition of Slovan Bratislava, a result that said more about PSG’s attacking shape than any pre-season proclamation could.

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The schedule is now about to test it. PSG travel to Manchester City on Wednesday at the Etihad, then host Barcelona at the Parc des Princes on Tuesday 20 October. Two of the clubs Enrique himself placed inside his “six, seven or eight”, back to back, in the space of six days.

Barcelona, the club Enrique already won it with

The Barcelona fixture carries its own history for the manager. Enrique lifted the Champions League with Barcelona in 2015 before taking the PSG job in 2023. Beating them in Paris would hand him a result against the club where he first became a European champion as a coach, and keep the threepeat run alive against one of the sides he has publicly named as a threat to it.

Manchester comes first, on Wednesday night at the Etihad.

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