Coupe de France: “When you relax, everything goes to hell,” warns Luis Enrique before Stade Briochin-PSG

Senny Mayulu : "He is a player from the training center, he is one of the youngsters with the highest potential. He is with us this season and he had already had playing time last season. I really like his profile, his qualities with and without the ball. He is a player already for the present with us."

Athletic preparation : “A priority? No, it’s constant in our teams, we give importance to physical preparation but it’s part of a global approach. We continue along these lines, we take care of the players, we don’t take any risks. Injuries can also be bad luck, a blow, but we take a lot of care of the physical aspect. Our players have always run a lot and it’s because they enjoy playing.”

Progress in the game : "I don't have an ideal, it doesn't exist in football. Above all, you have to keep the level of demand because when teams relax, everything goes to hell. We want to get away from conformism and we always try to improve."

How the end of the match in Lyon ( 3-2 victory ) can be useful to PSG in the future : "All the aspects to improve in a match can be useful in the future. After reviewing the match, we were conditioned by the emotions at the end of the match. It was only five minutes during which we did not know how to defend but the rest of the match was exceptional on a pitch that was difficult. The team played a very complete match in Lyon. (…) Lessons for Liverpool? There is no transmission or reference from one match to another, they are different competitions. We want to always be competitive, the team always shows a series of positive behaviors. We play every three days. We always give the same intensity even if the result can obviously vary. That is what defines this team."

Managing game time before Liverpool (March 5 and 11) : “I intend to manage game time as I have done so far. There is a plan. The most important match is tomorrow but there is a general vision of the last 10 or 12 matches. And this plan is subject to change. It is important for us to face these matches with a global team perspective, we have a lot of players who can play in many positions. To play against Liverpool in the best way, we must arrive with adequate game time and that is what we will look for.”

Gonçalo Ramos : "He is important when he plays 1 minute, 10 minutes, 30 or 90. And even when he does not play, he is very important because of his state of mind, he is at the service of the team. He is a player who has an exceptional number of goals per minute played and I hope he will continue like that, or even do better. I am delighted to have a player like Gonçalo Ramos."

How to avoid letting up before Saint-Brieuc : "It's simple at the moment, especially in the Coupe de France. More than half of the Ligue 1 teams have already been eliminated. We suffered against Espaly and Le Mans. And especially against Espaly, by the way. So it's not possible to relax. We hope that the pitch will allow us to play a good match. But we're going to suffer tomorrow (Wednesday), that's for sure, that's the whole difficulty of the Coupe de France."

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Using mobility and changing positions, expanding the field, creates more favorable situations for the team that has possession.

Luis Enrique

Désiré Doué and the instructions to "expand the pitch" : "It's very basic for us who want possession, it's one of my priorities. You have to use your head, have a powerful physique and total technical ability like my players, but you have to understand the game. The bigger the pitch, the harder it is for the opponent to defend. There are many players for whom it's difficult, but that's not the case for Désiré. In positional play, there are several principles like that, and expanding the pitch is one of the main ones during possession phases. (…) When you have the ball, it depends on where it is. It's hard to expand the pitch when you have the ball at the goalkeeper's level. When you're in the opponent's half of the pitch, you can do it, it also depends on the position of the opponents. That's what we have to understand first on our side. Using mobility and changing positions, expanding the pitch, it creates more favorable situations for the team that has possession. And there are the technical qualities, not losing the ball under pressure, in which areas you can take risks, playing in a structured way with the ball which allows you to press to lose… When everything is done at the same time, it seems simple, but it's a lot of little things, like expanding the pitch."

Trap match against Saint-Brieuc : "Yes. In fact, all matches are when you think about it, the favourite doesn't often win in the end in football. A team can win by attacking very little."

Penalty shootouts : “We can work on all the phases in training, but we can’t repeat the scenario. The crowd, the pressure, the circumstances change. It’s difficult to recreate that in training, so we don’t prepare for the penalty shootout because we hope to win the game beforehand, but we know which players are in the best condition to take them. If we get to the penalty shootout, we should ask the players if they feel confident.”

Comments collected at a press conference