"They deserved those trophies. I love their football." That's PSG manager Luis Enrique, asked about the Premier League's guilty verdict against Manchester City ahead of Wednesday's Champions League meeting between the clubs. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of financial compliance — but it tells you everything about where his loyalties sit.
Enrique and Pep Guardiola go back decades. Both played for Spain in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. Both graduated to the senior national team around the same time. Enrique then made one of Spanish football's most controversial transfers — swapping Real Madrid for Barcelona in 1996 under the new Bosman ruling — and later managed Barcelona B while Guardiola ran the first team, before taking the top job himself in 2014. This isn't just professional courtesy. This is a friendship built over thirty years.
The PSG parallel is hard to ignore
There's also an institutional symmetry here that Enrique didn't spell out but doesn't need to. PSG went through a near-identical situation after Qatar's 2011 takeover — UEFA fined both clubs in 2014 for financial rule breaches. Man City fans have been booing the Champions League anthem ever since. PSG know what it looks like when a newly-moneyed club gets scrutinised by European football's governing bodies. They've sat in that chair.
So when Enrique says he hopes "everything works out well" for City and doesn't want to see trophies stripped, he's not speaking from a neutral corner. He's speaking from experience — and from friendship.
City lodged their appeal against the independent panel's guilty verdict, with a decision expected around late January. If still found guilty, further appeals to higher bodies remain possible. Potential punishments range from substantial fines to retrospective and forward-looking points deductions — sanctions that would reshape the Premier League table in ways that bookmakers haven't yet fully priced in.
Playing on while the verdict looms
In the meantime, City keep winning. They dismantled Liverpool at the weekend, their fans leaning into the pantomime villain role with something approaching joy. Rúben Dias summed up the mood: "We have complete confidence in the club."
Guardiola, who stepped down as manager in May, is expected to be in the stands on Wednesday — his first appearance since leaving. That alone makes this a stranger occasion than most Champions League group-stage fixtures.
Enrique's backing is warm, genuine, and largely irrelevant to what happens next. The authorities — not former colleagues or rival managers — will decide whether those trophies stay where they are.
"The trophies you win on the pitch remain on the pitch," Enrique said. Whether the Premier League agrees is the only question that matters now.
