Luis Enrique said PSG arrive at the Uefa Super Cup final against Aston Villa with an unusual problem for the first official match of the season: too many players are still trying to catch up. Speaking before the game in Salzburg, Austria, he said some of his squad only came back on Monday, others returned the previous week, and he could not know what shape they would be in when the final starts.
That matters now because PSG are entering a final without the rhythm a club usually wants at this stage. Enrique said he wanted his side to be competitive and to chase the Super Cup, but he also stressed that he had few players available for preseason matches. In his words, it is the first official game of the season and an important one, yet the squad is still being assembled in real time.
The scale of the disruption is clear in the timing. Some of PSG's players had only just resumed work on Monday, while others were back a week earlier, leaving Enrique to manage a split preparation period before this Wednesday's match. He said the situation was atypical because of the World Cup, the same kind of calendar strain he said affected the team last year as well, when the summer break was also shaped by the Club World Cup.
That leaves a friction point at the heart of PSG's build-up. Enrique wants to be competitive and pursue another trophy, but he is also admitting that fitness, sharpness and selection are still unsettled. He did not name the returning players, only the gap they created: some are ready to work, others are still arriving, and he cannot be sure how sharp they will be when the whistle goes.
The uncertainty sits against a broader backdrop of a squad trying to start a season with immediate pressure. Enrique said PSG had rested practically all summer, which made the late arrivals more disruptive, not less. The club's first task is to translate limited preparation into a final that still looks like a normal contest on paper, even if it has not felt normal inside training.
Vitinha and Marquinhos also spoke in Salzburg, adding a different tone to the day. Marquinhos said Aston Villa had caused PSG problems in the past and that the team had to forget that history to win the next match, while also promising pressure and ball recovery against any rival. Vitinha shifted briefly to the Ballon d'Or conversation and said there were many strong candidates this year, naming Kvara, Ousmane Dembélé, Fabián, Kane and Mbappé among them.
For PSG, the immediate question is not whether the season has started, but how much of the squad is ready to start it properly. Enrique's answer was blunt: not enough for comfort, and not enough for certainty.
