Luis Enrique lifted a second UEFA Champions League as a coach on Saturday, May 31, 2025, a decade on from his first success.
In 2015, his all-star Barcelona team lifted the trophy in Berlin; back in Germany at Munich’s Allianz Arena, he led Paris Saint-Germain to an astonishing win over Inter Milan to end their long wait for Europe’s grandest trophy.
But this is only part of an incredible football story from a man who crossed a bitter divide as a player and has excelled in some of the biggest coaching jobs in the sport.
Here’s everything you need to know about the incomparable Luis Enrique.
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Luis Enrique playing career
Luis Enrique began his career with hometown club Sporting Gijon, where his performances as an industrious and versatile attacker put him on the radar of the national team and the biggest clubs.
A Spain Under-21 debut in 1990 paved the way for his involvement in the triumphant 1992 Olympic squad in Barcelona. A full international appearance in April 1991 preceded a move to Real Madrid, where he spent five successful seasons.
However, in summer 1996, Luis Enrique did the unthinkable. After letting his contract run down, he joined arch rivals Barcelona on a free transfer. ‘Lucho’ wasted little time in becoming a crowd hero and captained Barca during an eight-year spell that concluded when he hung his boots up in 2004.
Luis Enrique retired from international football two years earlier than that, having represented Spain at three consecutive FIFA World Cups. He won 62 caps and scored 12 goals.
Luis Enrique coaching career
In 2008, Luis Enrique was appointed as head coach of Barcelona B, replacing Pep Guardiola, who was elevated to the first team to mastermind a defining period of success. In due course, he would make the same journey but via a more circuitous route.
In 2009/10, Barcelona B won promotion to Spain’s second tier and in Luis Enrique’s final season they reached the Segunda Division playoffs but were ineligible for promotion to La Liga.
After that, Luis Enrique opted to spread his wings, first in Serie A with Roma before taking charge of Celta Vigo. Each of those one-season spells was relatively underwhelming, but Barca came calling after Tata Martino’s dispiriting 2013/14 season in charge.
Luis Suarez arrived from Liverpool and Luis Enrique initially struggled to make sense of a fantastical forward line also featuring Lionel Messi and Neymar. But the decision to move Messi out to the right wing from his false nine position and deploy Suarez as a central striker lit the touchpaper. Barca racked up goals and wins relentlessly over the second half of 2014/15 and swept the board, winning the UEFA Champions League after also taking La Liga and the Copa del Rey.
Barca made it back-to-back doubles in 2015/16, with the MSN forward line again to the fore. A third La Liga crown in a row proved beyond them in 2016/17, as Real Madrid returned to the summit in Spain and retained the Champions League. Barca’s campaign in Europe came up short against Juventus at the quarterfinal stage, but not before La Remontada. Following a 4-0 first-leg defeat to Paris Saint-Germain, Barca incredibly won the second leg 6-1 at Camp Nou to progress.
Luis Enrique stepped down at the end of his contract in June 2017 and, after a year’s hiatus, took charge of the Spain national team. La Roja’s golden period of three successive tournament wins between 2008 and 2012 had quickly faded after back-to-back World Cup disappointments in 2014 and 2018. A restorative run to the semifinals of Euro 2020, with a vibrant batch of young players, put Spain back on track, although a shock penalty-shootout exit against Morocco at the 2022 World Cup ended Luis Enrique’s tenure.
His work with Spain rather than a star-studded Barca has informed a superb job to date at PSG, where exciting youngsters have taken the mantle vacated by departed galacticos Neymar, Messi and Kylian Mbappe. After back-to-back Ligue 1 titles, they headed into the 2025 Champions League final as the form team in Europe, and they duly produced the most one-sided result the title match has ever seen.
Luis Enrique trophies won
Player
Real Madrid
- La Liga: 1994/95
- Copa del Rey: 1992/93
- Supercopa de Espana: 1993
Barcelona
- La Liga: 1997/98, 1998/99
- Copa del Rey: 1996/97, 1997–98
- Supercopa de Espana: 1996
- UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup: 1996/97
- UEFA Super Cup: 1997
Spain
Coach
Barcelona
- La Liga: 2014/15, 2015/16
- Copa del Rey: 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17
- Supercopa de Espana: 2016
- UEFA Champions League: 2014/15
- UEFA Super Cup: 2015
- FIFA Club World Cup: 2015
Paris Saint-Germain
- Ligue 1: 2023/24, 2024–25
- Coupe de France: 2023/24,[124] 2024/25
- Trophee des Champions: 2023, 2024
- UEFA Champions League: 2024/25
Luis Enrique tactics
Luis Enrique spun through various different configurations as Barcelona’s form faded in his final season in charge in 2016/17, but he’s since stayed true to Catalan footballing roots as a disciple of attacking 4-3-3.
First with Spain and then with PSG, he’s made the lack of a reliable central striker a virtue, selecting an array of adaptable and pacy attackers who never allow a defence to settle.
Luis Enrique oversaw the final years of Xavi and Andres’ Iniesta’s union at Barca and, through Pedri and Gavi with Spain to Fabian Ruiz and Joao Neves at PSG, his midfields remain places for creative invention.
What happened to Luis Enrique’s daughter?
Luis Enrique’s daughter Xana died in August 2019 after being diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. She was nine years old. Her father took a hiatus from the Spain job after her diagnosis and returned to work in November 2019.
In the years since, Luis Enrique has won widespread praise and admiration for his remarkable and moving reaction to his daughter’s death.
“The most negative experiences of your life are the ones that teach you the most,” he said in a 2024 documentary charting his career. “[People think] ‘But your little girl, your daughter, died aged nine…’. My daughter came to live with us for nine wonderful years. We have a thousand memories of her. You may ask whether I consider myself fortunate or unfortunate. I consider myself to have been fortunate. Very fortunate.”
In 2023, the Xana Foundation was established in her honour.
