Luis Enrique Transforms PSG: Achraf Hakimi's Journey
Achraf Hakimi leans back, smiles, and sums it up in one sweeping sentence: Luis Enrique has changed everything at Paris Saint-Germain.
For once, it doesn’t sound like a cliché. It sounds like a verdict.
A new PSG, a new Hakimi
Under Enrique, PSG have ripped up their old script. Three straight Ligue 1 titles, the 2024-25 Champions League already in the cabinet, and now a chance at back-to-back European crowns with Arsenal waiting in Budapest. The club that once felt like a collection of superstars now looks, and plays, like a team.
Inside that transformation sits Hakimi, one of its most vocal believers.
“Luis Enrique? He has changed everything at PSG,” the Moroccan told Sky Sport, his words carrying the weight of a dressing room that has lived through the shift. “Since he arrived, everyone has changed their mentality: now we are a team, we play for each other, we run for each other, we are a family. Playing like this, everything becomes easier.”
Hakimi doesn’t talk like a man just reading from the script. He talks like someone who has been re-wired.
“I am lucky to be in this team, with these teammates, and this coach. He changed my mentality and my way of being on the pitch. He has made me better as a footballer and as a man.”
That evolution has played out in numbers as well as narrative. This season alone, the full-back has produced three goals and nine assists in 31 appearances, a relentless outlet down the flank. Across his PSG career, the tally now stands at 28 goals and 44 assists in 206 matches – staggering output for a defender, and a reminder of just how central he is to Enrique’s system.
Injury scare fades before Arsenal showdown
For a brief moment, PSG held its breath. Hakimi limped off against Bayern Munich, and with the Champions League final looming, any doubt around his fitness felt like a potential fault line in Enrique’s carefully constructed side.
The coach shut that conversation down.
“Everyone is ready. Everyone arrives in a different way,” Enrique said this week, offering the calm his squad has come to mirror. “But it will be a week with a lot of changes, rest days and a lot of training to prepare the small offensive and defensive details. The rest is the sun in Paris and Budapest.”
Translation: no excuses, no drama. Hakimi will be there.
The defender’s focus is as sharp as his runs down the right.
“Being in the final again? I think it is a very beautiful achievement. It was not an easy path and we are proud to have reached the end of the competition again,” he said. “But now we must not lose focus because Arsenal are a truly strong opponent.”
Arsenal bring energy, structure, and a fierce belief of their own. PSG bring experience, scars, and a group that finally looks emotionally aligned with its manager. The margins will be thin. Players like Hakimi, who live on those margins, often decide nights like this.
Roots in Milan, peak in Paris
Even as he prepares for the biggest game of his PSG career, Hakimi hasn’t lost sight of the club that helped launch him into this elite bracket.
He arrived at Inter from Real Madrid in September 2020, lit up Serie A with his surging runs, and left for Paris in July 2021 in a deal reported at €68 million. The connection with the Nerazzurri never really faded.
“Yes, I am an Interista and I am very happy for the championship and the Coppa Italia,” he admitted, responding with the kind of affection that doesn’t usually survive modern transfers. Inter have just added more domestic silverware, and Hakimi watched like any other fan who once wore the shirt.
The relationships remain, too.
“If I have spoken to anyone? I wrote to Lautaro, I get along very well with him,” he revealed, a small detail that underlines how football careers can move on without erasing what came before.
His heart, he makes clear, still holds a place for Milan. His reality, though, is Paris. And right now, his absolute priority is European glory with PSG.
A coach who “changed everything.” A player who has grown with him. A club one win away from a second straight Champions League title.
Budapest will show whether this version of PSG, this family Hakimi describes, can turn a cultural shift into an era.
