The two clubs that spent most of the last decade briefing against each other walk out at the Parc des Princes with 100% records in the Champions League league phase, with kick-off at 9pm local time. PSG have put ten past Slovan Bratislava and Manchester City. Barcelona have taken nine off Galatasaray and Feyenoord. Six points each, top of the table.
The old script would have cast this as another chapter of a feud. The current one does not.
A Rome embrace, then two transfers
The reset moment has a date. On 8 October 2025, Joan Laporta sat at the European Club Association’s gala dinner in Rome as the personal guest of PSG president and ECA chairman Nasser Al-Khelaifi.
“Sometimes friends may disagree, that’s normal, but they always come back together for the common good,” Al-Khelaifi said that evening, welcoming “back to the family, the President of FC Barcelona, Joan Laporta.”
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Barcelona had spent years outside the ECA after helping launch the failed Super League with Real Madrid and Juventus. The Rome handshake confirmed their return and ended a Laporta and Al-Khelaifi cold war that had run through briefings, interviews and court filings.
What followed in the transfer market suggested the embrace was more than ceremony. In late January 2026, PSG completed the signing of 18-year-old Barcelona academy midfielder Dro Fernández. Luis Enrique personally called the teenager to convince him, and PSG paid above the €6m release clause, reported at around €8m, to keep the deal cordial.
Laporta still called the exit “unpleasant” and said Dro had already agreed a new Barcelona contract before changing his mind. There was no public war of words.
Then came Ferran Torres. On 15 August 2026, three weeks after his extra-time winner against Argentina gave Spain the World Cup at MetLife Stadium, PSG announced his signing from Barcelona on a deal running to 2031 for close to €50m.
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“For me, Luis Enrique has been like a father figure in the world of football,” Torres said at his unveiling.
“Having the chance to train under his guidance again makes me feel really excited and keen to get started on this project.”
PSG are reported to have asked Barcelona’s permission before approaching Torres directly, a courtesy that would have been unthinkable five years earlier.
The feud that is being forgotten
Nothing about this truce was obvious. Barcelona and PSG spent most of the last decade colliding over the biggest names in the game.
The 2016-17 Champions League Round of 16 is where the modern grievance starts. PSG won the first leg 4-0 in Paris. Barcelona pulled off a 6-1 comeback at Camp Nou that stripped the French club of a trophy they had treated as theirs. Within months Barcelona had replaced Qatar Airways with Rakuten as their shirt sponsor, infuriating PSG’s Qatari ownership, and were chasing Marco Verratti.
PSG’s response that summer was the biggest transfer in football history. They triggered Neymar’s €222m release clause, took Barcelona’s heir to Lionel Messi, and set off a decade of financial and sporting decline at Camp Nou that Hansi Flick’s squad is still working out of.
The hostilities continued. PSG took La Masia graduate Xavi Simons in 2019. In 2021, as a presidential candidate, Laporta publicly called PSG “a state-owned club” and questioned how they could pay Messi’s wages, before PSG duly signed the Argentine on a free.
First competitive test since the Rome handshake
The business logic of the new relationship is not sentimental. Barcelona’s spending is still constrained by La Liga’s financial controls, and PSG, reigning Champions League holders after their 5-0 win over Inter in Munich last May, have the cash and the willingness to pay above release clauses.
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What that relationship has never had is a competitive match under it. Tuesday is matchday three of the league phase, not a knockout. But it is the first meeting on the pitch since the Rome handshake, and the first time one of the two clubs will have to go home disappointed.
Barcelona arrive in Paris on an 11-match winning streak. Luis Enrique’s PSG are unbeaten in 12 European matches.
Kick-off is at 9pm local time at the Parc des Princes.
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