“He has to sleep with his fingers in the socket, because he’s full of energy.” The words are signed Luis Campos and they concern the other Luis, with whom he has shared his daily life for three years: Luis Enrique, the PSG coach.
In a long and fascinating interview given to the Spanish daily Marca, the football director of Paris Saint-Germain revealed some tasty behind-the-scenes insights into his daily life in Paris, particularly his working relationship with the Spanish coach.
He particularly mentions the recruitment process, for which the two men walk hand in hand. “There is no point in recruiting good players if we don’t have room for them,” explains Campos. Luis Enrique asks me to tell the players one thing when I talk to them: If you don’t come and train hard every day, don’t come, because Luis Enrique will kill you quickly. You have to know that every training session is like a match against the best team or teams in the world and that you will have to give your best every day. »
High standards, the key word for Luis Enrique
He continues: “At the end of his first season, he said to me one day: Luis, either we improve the daily level of training with all the players at a thousand miles an hour, or I leave. He instilled this requirement in me. »
Beyond this energy which he overflows with and which he demands of his players, Luis Enrique appeared to Campos as a tactical genius, in perpetual reinvention: “The first day of his second season, he arrived and said to me: Luis, you will see, the players will change position so much that the opponent will no longer know where they are. Mince ! I said to myself, What is he going to be able to invent? What new ideas will he still come up with? And he was right. During the fourth or fifth match, we played against Lille, and Benjamin André came to see me at the end of the match and said to me: Luis, I don’t understand anything about your team! »
“That’s when I understood that we were building something better than the previous year,” Campos explains. And I still feel it today because, despite all the injuries we had this year, the team remains fresh and efficient. I can already imagine what PSG will be like when all the players are available again and at the same level of physical and mental fitness. We will be very strong again, because it is a daily requirement for everyone at the club, and especially for Luis Enrique during his training sessions. »
“We couldn’t let the whole club pay for the Kylian affair”
Among the many other subjects discussed, he notably returns to the departure of Kylian Mbappé, which he helped to reveal in Monaco, in 2022. “I have had a special relationship with Kylian since then, I am not going to forget it and I am not going to hide it, but in this case, I tried to be as less emotional as possible. I always thought about protecting the team and the other players, we couldn’t let the whole club pay for the Kylian affair, even if Kylian Mbappé is very good. »
He also says that the Emir of Qatar, the owner of Paris Saint-Germain, is such a football fan that he regularly uses… Wyscout, a professional software for scouting which provides access to detailed player data. “He sometimes talks about players about whom I myself fear not being well informed,” he emphasizes. He really likes football, he knows where the main talents are. »
