The Rise of PSG: From European Cinderella to Champions League Champion
When Qatar Sports Investments (QSI) became the majority shareholder of Paris Saint-Germain in 2011, the club was in 48th position in the European ranking, according to EloFootball.com. A considerable advance, as a year earlier they were in 90th place.
At that moment, PSG had just finished fourth in Ligue 1, their best position in over a decade. They had been eliminated by Benfica in the round of 32 of the UEFA Europa League. In the summer of 2011, PSG resembled VfB Stuttgart or Werder Bremen, clubs with passionate fans but without a history of great success.
Fourteen years later, PSG rises as the champion of Europe. They conquered their first UEFA Champions League title, becoming the second French club to achieve it, thanks to a resounding 5-0 victory over Inter Milan in Munich. This performance could be considered the best in a Champions League final, equaling the number of European titles of teams like Manchester City.
Saturday’s victory is the result of more than a decade of investment, disappointments, and mistakes. It also gives us the opportunity to analyze the path that led PSG to the top.
A dizzying rise, followed by stagnation.2011-12 Season
- Coach: Antoine Kombouaré, then Carlo Ancelotti
- Position in Ligue 1: 2nd
- Europe: Europa League group stage
- EloFootball ranking at the end of the year: 28th
After 14 years of European failure, PSG finally won their first Champions League on Saturday.
Initially, the plan was simple: to invest heavily in renowned signings, such as Javier Pastore from Palermo for 42 million euros, followed by Thiago Motta from Inter in January, and to hire the most prestigious coach possible. Ancelotti arrived after an irregular performance in the league and a frustrating elimination in the Europa League group stage. PSG only lost two of their last 23 league matches and finished just three points behind the surprising champion Montpellier. The team’s direction quickly became evident.
2012-13 Season
- Coach: Carlo Ancelotti
- Position in Ligue 1: 1st
- Europe: Champions League Quarter-finals (lost against Barcelona, 3-3 on away goals)
- EloFootball Ranking at the end of the year: 8th
The squad was significantly reinforced in the second year. PSG brought in Zlatan Ibrahimovic from AC Milan and Thiago Silva, Ezequiel Lavezzi from Napoli, and young midfielder Marco Verratti in the summer of 2012, as well as 37-year-old David Beckham and 20-year-old Brazilian Lucas Moura in January of the following year. They won Ligue 1 by 12 points and only lost once in 10 Champions League matches. They led Barcelona in the second leg of the quarter-finals, but a goal by Pedro in the 71st minute eliminated them. Although they had won Ligue 1 in 1986 and the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup in 1996, this was the best season in the club’s history, which led to Ancelotti being hired by Real Madrid that summer.
2013-14 Season
- Coach: Laurent Blanc
- Position in Ligue 1: 1st
- Europe: Champions League Quarter-finals (lost against Chelsea, 3-3 on away goals)
- EloFootball ranking at the end of the year: 8th
Following Ancelotti’s departure, PSG hired former French national team coach Laurent Blanc and invested in more Serie A stars: Edinson Cavani from Napoli and 19-year-old Marquinhos from AS Roma. Cavani and Ibrahimovic scored 42 league goals, and PSG improved by six points, reaching 89 in Ligue 1, but after some important victories in the Champions League (3-0 over Benfica, 5-0 over Anderlecht, 6-1 on aggregate over Bayer Leverkusen in the round of 16) and a 3-1 victory over Chelsea in the first leg of the quarter-finals, they collapsed, allowing a late goal from Demba Ba in the second leg and falling again on away goals.
2014-15 Season
- Coach: Laurent Blanc
- Position in Ligue 1: 1st
- Europe: Champions League Quarter-finals (lost against Barcelona, 5-1)
- EloFootball Ranking at the end of the year: 8th
After a relatively quiet summer, with the only significant addition of David Luiz from Chelsea, while Kingsley Coman, a teenager and future star, was able to leave for free, PSG had a relatively slow start and were seven points behind league leaders Lyon by mid-January. They rallied to win a domestic quadruple (Ligue 1, Coupe de France, Coupe de la Ligue and Trophée des Champions), but were outmatched by Luis Enrique’s Barcelona in the Champions League. It was the third consecutive quarter-final defeat, although, from a brand perspective, growth continued: They climbed to fourth place in the Deloitte Money League with 481 million euros in revenue in 2014-15.
2015-16 Season
- Coach: Laurent Blanc
- Position in Ligue 1: 1st
- Europe: Champions League Quarter-finals (lost against Manchester City, 3-2)
- EloFootball Ranking at the end of the year: 5th
PSG signed another Premier League star in the summer of 2015, bringing in Manchester United winger Ángel Di María to the squad (and letting go of another future star, 20-year-old goalkeeper Mike Maignan). Di María was a perfect talisman, creating 18 assists, more than half of which were for Ibrahimovic (38 league goals) or Cavani (19). PSG reached 96 points in the league, 31 more than Lyon, who finished second, and won another domestic quadruple. But they fell for the fourth consecutive season in the Champions League quarter-finals. PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi publicly called the season a failure, and PSG and Blanc parted ways after three ridiculously successful seasons. Ibrahimovic and Luiz also left.
2016-17 Season
- Coach: Unai Emery
- Position in Ligue 1: 2nd
- Europe: Champions League Round of 16 (lost against Barcelona, 6-5)
- EloFootball Ranking at the end of the year: 5th
But then came The Comeback.
2017-18 Season
- Coach: Unai Emery
- Position in Ligue 1: 1st
- Europe: Champions League Round of 16 (lost against Real Madrid, 5-2)
- EloFootball ranking at the end of the year: 6th
1:02 PSG fans flood the streets of Paris to celebrate the UCL title. PSG fans take to the streets of Paris after their team was crowned Champions League champions with a 5-0 victory over Inter Milan.
Barcelona’s 6-1 victory in the second leg of the 2016-17 Champions League round of 16 was one of the most exciting matches in football. It also ended up changing the sport when a desperate and wounded PSG completely restarted the transfer market, disbursing 222 million euros to acquire Neymar, the main architect of La Remontada, from Barcelona. They also agreed on a transfer of 180 million euros for Mbappé. The impactful moves forced Barça into a series of imprudent expenses that made them an irrelevant team in Europe in the following seasons, but the signings only helped PSG to a certain extent at first. They dominated Ligue 1 and won another national quadruple, but after taking an early lead over Real Madrid in the Champions League round of 16, they allowed four consecutive goals and fell in a mediocre way. That was enough to fire Emery.
2018-19 Season
- Coach: Thomas Tuchel
- Position in Ligue 1: 1st
- Europe: Champions League Round of 16 (lost against Manchester United, 3-3 on away goals)
- EloFootball Ranking at the end of the year: 8th
At this point, the huge spending and the power of the stars had turned PSG into a truly enormous brand. As Tom Williams said in “Va-Va-Voom: The Modern History of French Football”, “A year after the arrival of [Neymar and Mbappé] and following Mbappé’s stellar performance in the 2018 World Cup, the club announced an exclusive three-year partnership with Nike’s subsidiary, Air Jordan, leading Al-Khelaifi to proclaim that PSG was now ‘one of the three biggest football brands in the world.’ PSG opened offices in Shanghai, Singapore, and New York. Celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Mick Jagger, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, and Selena Gomez attended matches at the Parc des Princes. Beyoncé appeared on Instagram wearing a PSG jersey embroidered with Swarovski crystals, teenagers clamored for the club’s branded merchandise from Toronto to Tokyo. No French club had ever been so visible, so glamorous, so modern. And yet, on the field, PSG became the laughingstock.”
Losing year after year to European elite teams like Barça and Real Madrid was one thing, but in the spring of 2019, PSG lost to a struggling and battered Manchester United team after winning 2-0 at Old Trafford in the first leg. Two goals from Romelu Lukaku and a late penalty from Marcus Rashford sealed another collapse. PSG also lost in the Coupe de France and the Coupe de la Ligue.
2019-20 Season
- Coach: Thomas Tuchel
- Position in Ligue 1: 1st
- Europe: Champions League Final (lost against Bayern Munich, 1-0)
- EloFootball Ranking at the end of the year: 3rd
After basically swapping promising young stars like Christopher Nkunku (RB Leipzig) and Moussa Diaby (Bayer Leverkusen) for veterans like Idrissa Gueye (Everton) and Keylor Navas (Real Madrid), PSG took a solid step forward in Tuchel’s second season. They were on track to get 96 points when COVID-19 ended the Ligue 1 campaign, and in the abbreviated (and audience-free) Champions League knockout rounds, they achieved comebacks against Borussia Dortmund and Atalanta. But former PSG youth player Coman scored for Bayern in the 59th minute of the final. This was the most successful season so far for the new PSG, but they were left at the gates of European glory.
2020-21 Season
- Coach: Thomas Tuchel, then Mauricio Pochettino
- Ligue 1 position: 2nd
- Europe: Champions League Semifinals (lost against Manchester City, 4-1)
- EloFootball ranking at the end of the year: 4th
Being so close to glory didn’t do Tuchel any favors. A shaky start to the 2020-21 season – four league defeats, two in the Champions League group stage – meant he was sacked in December. Pochettino produced a bit of momentum in the new year, and PSG seemingly exorcised a couple of demons with victories over a declining Barcelona and defending champion Bayern Munich in the Champions League knockout stages, but PSG were dismantled by Manchester City in the semi-finals.
2021-22 Season
- Coach: Mauricio Pochettino
- Position in Ligue 1: 1st
- Europe: Champions League Round of 16 (lost against Real Madrid, 3-2)
- EloFootball Ranking at the end of the year: 7th
The summer of 2021 proved transformative in several different ways. In the long term, PSG brought in a trio of youngsters who would become important pillars for the eventual 2025 championship team, signing 22-year-old right-back Achraf Hakimi, 19-year-old left-back Nuno Mendes (Sporting CP), and 22-year-old goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma (AC Milan). But in the short term, they made their biggest move, snatching Lionel Messi when Barcelona, choked by years of reckless spending after Neymar’s departure, could not afford to keep him. They also brought in veterans Sergio Ramos and Georginio Wijnaldum, former Champions League winners. Clearly, they were betting everything on the 2021-22 season.
Instead, they won a trophy. They easily won Ligue 1, but with Messi seeming only half-hearted and Neymar missing almost half the season through injury (not exactly unusual at that point), they quietly said goodbye against Real Madrid, again seeing an early lead disappear.
“The secret against PSG is to press them,” said Karim Benzema of Real Madrid to L’Équipe. “The matches they have lost in Ligue 1 are those in which they are pressed from all sides. And then, when we score, they told themselves that they had lost the match… That often happens to them, they give up mentally.”
Karim Benzema
Ouch!
2022-23 Season
- Coach: Christophe Galtier
- Position in Ligue 1: 1st
- Europe: Champions League Round of 16 (lost against Bayern Munich, 3-0)
- EloFootball Ranking at the end of the year: 15th
While PSG continued to accumulate key pieces for the future, such as 22-year-old midfielder Vitinha (from FC Porto), while 16-year-old academy graduate Warren Zaïre-Emery found a place in the rotation, new coach Christophe Galtier encountered the same problems as Pochettino: with Mbappé, Neymar, and Messi up front, PSG had no forward willing to press. In the modern game, that creates an imbalance difficult to overcome. The power of the stars and a combined 58 goals and 32 assists from the attacking trio produced another easy league title. Meanwhile, the deficiencies produced a surprising second place in the Champions League group stage and another defeat in the knockout round, this time against Bayern. It was time to start again: Galtier was dismissed, Neymar left for Saudi Arabia, and Messi went to Miami. This was completely Mbappé’s team… for a moment, anyway.
2023-24 Season
- Coach: Luis Enrique
- Position in Ligue 1: 1st
- Europe: Champions League Semifinals (lost against Borussia Dortmund, 2-0)
- EloFootball Ranking at the end of the year: 7th
1:13 How PSG won the Champions League without Kylian Mbappé. ESPN FC’s Stewart Robson explains how PSG managed to win their first Champions League trophy without Kylian Mbappé.
What made the 2024-25 season different?
Without a doubt, success, as originally conceived by Al-Khelaifi and QSI, had already been half-achieved entering the 2024-25 season. PSG had become one of the biggest brands in the world, as demonstrated by its rise to third place in the Deloitte list, behind only Real Madrid and Barcelona, in 2022-23. They had the partnership with Nike and had all the shirt sales they could desire.
They had also won a large number of domestic trophies, but the one trophy that had truly eluded them didn’t seem any closer to their grasp entering the 2024-25 season. They had started to look like a true Luis Enrique team at the end of 2023-24, and their Champions League semi-final exit was truly unfortunate, but the loss of Mbappé was considered a major setback for obvious reasons.
However, PSG stuck to the plan. After adding pressing forward Gonçalo Ramos in January 2024, the club continued to target young players, adding teenagers Désiré Doué (Stade Rennais) and João Neves (Benfica) and 22-year-old defender Willian Pacho (Eintracht Frankfurt). And in January, they finally completed a long pursuit of Napoli winger Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.
Even with the recent transfer of Kolo Muani that failed to generate traction (he was loaned to Juventus in January), PSG had a wealth of young talent, and Luis Enrique knew what to do with it. Eventually.
In a 12-match stretch from October 1 to early December, PSG suffered four draws and three losses, all in the Champions League, and found themselves in a precarious position in the new Champions League league phase. They were in 25th place out of 36 teams with three matches remaining. (Only the top 24 advance to the knockout rounds). However, starting with a 3-0 victory at RB Salzburg on December 10, everything began to click.
Luis Enrique’s construction process after Mbappé unfolded step by step. As a source told ESPN, “[He] knew after Mbappé’s departure that he had a lot of work to do to make this team play as a team. So he had some work axes, and he would only move on to the next one once he had taught one to the players. They started with the pressure. Once they mastered that, it was the counter-pressure. Then the position of Hakimi, and then the position of Nuno Mendes as a left-back: [It would work as] half of a third center-back in possession, half of a No. 8 in the left midfield. Then Dembélé’s position change… He did this until they were exactly the team he wanted them to be.”
In retrospect, the subtle statistical changes mean a big difference.
The PSG allowed only 44.1 progressive carries per game in the Champions League knockout rounds, easily the lowest number they have allowed in the competition. That’s a clear sign of their improved pressing abilities. Meanwhile, they averaged 18.6 shots per 90 minutes in the knockout stages, a higher total than they averaged with Mbappé, Neymar, Messi and company. They could attack as the occasion required, either with long sequences of possession or with quick strikes: Their 4.1 direct attacks (sequences that start in the defensive half and produce a shot within 20 seconds) and 3.1 counterattack shots were their highest averages in knockout rounds, but their 0.92 meters per second of direct speed (the average distance the ball moves towards the field in a given sequence) was also their lowest average. They had all the clubs in the proverbial bag.This was a comprehensive turnaround, one that even the players themselves said began with a comeback victory over Manchester City on January 22. City themselves were trying to overcome their most fragile run of results in the Pep Guardiola era, and they took a 2-0 lead with two quick goals in the second half. However, starting with a goal by Dembélé on a counterattack, PSG scored four goals in the last 35 minutes and stoppage time, attempting 18 shots against City’s two in the process. They swept City.
In the following six weeks, they would add Kvaratshkelia and surpass 12 opponents by a combined 41-8. Then they tied with Liverpool in the round of 16; after an unfortunate 1-0 home defeat against the eventual Premier League champions, they responded with a victory at Anfield and took the tie in penalties. They shot to a 5-1 aggregate lead over Aston Villa in the quarterfinals, and then withstood a late charge in a boisterous environment to advance. Dembélé scored in the fourth minute of the first leg of the semifinals at Arsenal, and they advanced 3-1 on aggregate. And then, after having won all the domestic trophies once again, they humiliated Inter in the final.
The comeback against Manchester City was a great narrative device, but on paper, the turnaround had begun a month earlier. And it began specifically with the impulses of two key players in new roles.
With a more important role in the absence of Mbappé, Dembélé started the season with mediocre form. In his first 18 matches, he produced only five goals and four assists, zero and one, respectively, in four Champions League matches. In this period, 83% of his minutes came on the right wing. But from the victory over RB Salzburg, he would play 82% of his minutes as a center forward for the rest of the season. And as the focal point of the attack, he would suddenly become a candidate for the Ballon d’Or. Since December 15, he has scored 27 goals with eight assists in 31 matches. He created an avalanche of quality shot attempts for himself, and his side-to-side ball distribution proved equally vital.
(Source: TruMedia)
(Source: TruMedia)
Meanwhile, with Barcola struggling to make an impact in the Champions League, he had 10 goals and two assists in 14 Ligue 1 matches, but zero and zero in the most important competition, Luis Enrique made a change in the lineup by giving Doué greater responsibilities.
Doué until December 6: 17 matches, 525 minutes (30.9 per appearance); zero goals, one assist; 0.45 xG+xA per 90 minutes Doué since December 16th: 38 matches, 2,424 minutes (63.8 per appearance); 15 goals, 13 assists; 0.74 xG+xA per 90 minutes With eight combined goals and assists in 1,600 minutes at the age of 18 at Rennais last season, Doué was seen as an almost certain future star, but he hadn’t done much in Paris before Luis Enrique forced the issue and put him in the starting lineup. And with his ability to play on the right or left, something important once Kvaratskhelia joined in January, he was an absolute game-changer both in attack and defense. Doué and Kvaratskhelia gave PSG a pair of tireless runners up front, Hakimi and Mendes had become the best full-back duo in the world, Vitinha shone as a pure ball progression machine in the middle, Barcola thrived from the bench, and in his new role, Dembélé gave PSG the most prolific center forward in Europe in 2025.(Source: TruMedia)
Aiming for the power of the stars and the glamour helped PSG establish itself as a money-making machine, but the club ultimately didn’t get its biggest prize until it lost its biggest stars and learned to overwhelm its opponents with depth, energy, and a good dose of modern tactics.Achieving an encore performance tends to be even more difficult than the initial breakthrough. Luis Enrique knows this as well as anyone: even with almost everything
