Achraf Hakimi has not softened the story in retelling it.

Speaking on the podcast The Bridge, the 28-year-old right-back said the arrival of Messi at PSG in the summer of 2021 remade the club’s style around a new attacking order, and he was no longer part of it in the way he had expected.

“I wasn’t doing the things I love to do, like attacking and feeling important… I felt like a minor player,” Hakimi told The Bridge, in comments carried by Goal.

Hakimi had moved to Paris from Inter Milan for an initial €60m only weeks before Messi joined on a free transfer from Barcelona. The club he had signed up to was not quite the club he found himself in.

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‘The project changed, and I wasn’t enjoying it’

The tactical reset was immediate. PSG tilted everything towards the Messi, Neymar and Kylian Mbappé front line, and Hakimi’s attacking runs down the right became a secondary concern.

“As soon as Messi arrived, Paris Saint-Germain’s project changed, and with it the team’s style of play. We were playing in different ways and I wasn’t enjoying it,” he said on the same podcast.

What made it harder was the contrast with his Morocco role, where he was treated as a central figure. The same player looked different in a PSG shirt, and the criticism that followed was something he struggled to carry.

Luis Enrique has put him back at the centre

The turnaround came in 2023, when Luis Enrique arrived and Messi and Neymar had already left. The Spaniard rebuilt PSG around aggressive pressing and attacking fullbacks, and Hakimi slotted straight back into the kind of game he had been signed to play.

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The numbers since have followed. In the voting window for this year’s award, Hakimi recorded four goals and 17 assists in 49 appearances as PSG won a second consecutive Champions League, Ligue 1 and the UEFA Super Cup. He finished 13th at the Ballon d’Or ceremony on 26 October, a drop from the sixth place he took in 2025, which remains the best finish ever for a Moroccan man.

Luis Enrique is not going anywhere either. PSG extended his contract until 2030 on 4 September, locking in the manager who has let Hakimi be Hakimi again.

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