Is the complicity of PSG players the key to their future success?

• As they prepare to play in the final of the Coupe de France against Saint-Etienne, the players of PSG have shown in recent weeks a real collective force.
• This is perhaps due to the fact that, this season, the Parisian group seems to have forged real bonds of friendship.
• If that will not be enough to go to win the Champions League in August, it may be a good start when it comes to three very important deadlines for the club in the capital.

It's a little phrase from Paul Le Guen that put us in our ears before the Coupe de France final on Friday night between PSG and Saint-Etienne. While his team was derailed in a friendly match by PSG (9-0) in mid-July at the Stade Océane, on the occasion of the post-Covid-19 recovery, the Le Havre coach felt that something took place in Thomas Tuchel's group. "We feel that they have fun meeting each other, I saw a lot of complicity while watching them," Le Guen notes on the L'Equipe channel . I admire, they are champions, stars, but champions who are being prepared. They have an appetite, they are focused on their goals, that's precise ”.

This complicity is not the first time that it jumps out at us. Since the end of confinement, but already before, the Parisians give the impression of forming a real family. It is the famous “group that lives well”. You only have to play the paparazzi and snoop around their Twitter and Instagram accounts to be convinced. The players and their loved ones spend a lot of time together outside of football. A barbeuc here, a fiesta there, it's not complicated, it looks like a bunch of Erasmus students let loose for a year in Barcelona.

Paris is magic🗼 pic.twitter.com/8rWuoqbXIz

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Asadito ❤️. Amigos ❤️

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Hence this question: if this friendship is not a guarantee of sporting success, can it still serve the players with a view to this end of the season with three trophies to boot?

Liverpool as an absolute example

Like us, Luis Fernandez felt “a group that was eager to meet again, that almost comes back to life, that wants to play, that wants to have fun. When you have been locked up for two months, you haven't seen your teammates, behind your desire to come back is tenfold, it's obvious. "For the former Parisian coach, the complicity between the players" must be the priority for a coach ".

He explains: “You have to try to unite a group, to create an osmosis, to make the guys enjoy living together, eating together, meeting each other. The best example of that is Klopp's Liverpool where we really have the feeling that they are happy to be together and it shows in their football. When I was coaching, I liked that we all went to eat together after the games. But not just the players, their wives, their children. It allows us to get to know each other better, to go further than what we can say in the context of football. "

To better understand the effect of a good understanding between the members of a group on the results of a team, it suffices to take the example of Gueugnon in the year 2000, this band of friends who created a journey incredible in the Coupe de France with, on arrival, a final victory at the Stade de France against PSG. “We had a lot of parties between us, we saw each other all the time. We would stay two, three hours in the locker room after practice talking, playing idiots. There was a sick atmosphere, ”Nicolas Esceth-N'Zi explained to our Eurosport colleagues on this subject. To find out more, we relaunched it on the subject.

20 years ago, April 22, 2000 ... #Gueugnon #PSG #coupedelaligue pic.twitter.com/dYDThag9ta

In Gueugnon in 2000, Ricard, fiesta and laughing bars

“In my eyes, this is the most important element in a team. I will be told that there are examples of teams that have won without necessarily being very friends, ok, but that seems complicated to me. It has happened to me in my career to barely talk to guys over a season, obviously that can be felt in the life of the group. But that year, in Gueugnon, the gang is united as ever. Well, maybe also because there weren't many other people to meet there, but that doesn't prevent.

“During the preparation, the coach [Alex Dupont] always left us a free evening, in mode" go ahead guys, have fun ", and the elders liked that we all went out to party together, he remembers. In fact the season it really started on those evenings. When you have guys who are a little introverted, it frees them. " Of the kind ?

"Well we would arrive in the evening, tac, 7pm you start the first Ricard, the first deliriums, and two hours later, the guy you usually never heard you found him dancing shirtless on the table! The guys let go and all of a sudden you don't see them the same the next day. It's all stupid but it really frees everyone and creates a real thing in a group. I fully believe in that! "

As a good indicator, we threw the info to Alex Dupont history to have his feelings of the time. "Well, guys don't necessarily have to get drunk," he laughs. But the simple fact of seeing yourself outside, it allows you to create affinities and for a coach that can only be beneficial. The notion of family spirit, even in a club like PSG, is essential because a group of footballers is a microcosm, we are more often between ourselves than with our own families. And then it allows them to regulate certain technical or tactical aspects by themselves. "

His former player validates: “A team is like a family, if it is united, united, everything is easier behind. You say things to yourself more easily, but in football as in life, it is the unspoken that leaves traces. There, if the guy is your friend, you will be able to say things to him naturally without it being badly perceived. "

"They love each other"

If we can measure the complicity of a group on its ability to party together, then we can say it plainly, this season the PSG is a real team of friends. Remember those images of Cavani, Navas, Neymar and the whole gang, shirtless dancing on the dancefloor just hours after the defeat in Dortmund in the knockout stages of C1. This time, the police of good morals on social networks had released the slipper to turn on the players. But, as Marquinhos explained shortly after, the evening "it was just a little while we were trying to spend together to forget about football".

Ask Neymar to discreetly celebrate his birthday to finally find them three days after a defeat in C1 dancing shirtless and playing the caterpillar by turning the towels with Kyky on the turntables. It's fascinating. pic.twitter.com/7QpOzlqwSb

At the time, at 20 Minutes , we had chosen to minimize the drama. “On our side, we prefer to see it as proof that the group is living well. Let them prepare for the return leg against Dortmund as they see fit, there will still be time to troll them in March in case of elimination. After all, it is at the end of the ball that the musicians are paid ”, we wrote then. And what had happened on the way back? A big match, a lot of solidarity and a qualifying that could not be more deserved. "For me the truth is there," concludes Esceth-N'Zi. If guys go out together outside of football, it's because they love each other, that they have the same delusions, it's clear and clear, they don't pretend. And there is nothing better for a team. "

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