Luis Enrique, Manager of Paris Saint-Germain, has warned that his royal French champion Liverpool will “attack” in the Champions League round of the Champions League next week, which the Spanish boss called the “50-50” game.
PSG extended its amazing winning streak to ten games in all competitions with a 4-1 flash at home in Lille on Saturday evening. Enrique described the opening of 45 minutes, in which the Capital Club scored four unanswered goals as “the best first half of this season”.
Lille are not helpless patsies – as Enrique wanted to point out. Bruno Genesio’s team is also located in the 16th round of the Champions League and has defeated both Madrid clubs in the leading competition of Europe this season. Lille even pressed Liverpool in the league of the newly expanded tournament, although he had lost 2-1.
“It shows our current level,” said Enrique about PSG’s convincing victory in Paris. “Now we have to think about the Champions League, two games against Liverpool, remember to recover and be ambitious.”
“We won’t change much,” warned the former Spain chief, “today was a test, Liverpool and Lille have similar things, we printed them under so that they could no longer play from behind, they had to play for a long time.
“It will be different, it will of course be very complicated, but we are in the best time of the season. We will play against the best team in Europe, but it is not in our mentality to speculate, to protect ourselves, to stay defensive, we will attack and we will try to do this in our favor.”
In view of the respective strengths of both sides, Enrique admitted that this last 16 draw “could have been a Champions League final”. In reality, the bad start to the European campaign this season forced them to play a play -off against Brest before they were paired with Liverpool – which achieved the best record throughout the opening phase.
The Liverpool Manager Arne Slot was deliberately not in the response to the round of the 16th round, which this delicious two-legged tie set up, but recognized the “challenge” of playing such an in-shape team.
The red trips to the first half of this double ball to the French capital on Wednesday, before they are greeted at the crucial second leg on Tuesday, March 11th, in the crucial second leg.