Champions League ultimate: Coach Enrique’s private ode to late daughter

The soccer god, if there’s one, was in a temper for want fulfilment on the Allianz Area in Munich on the evening of Saturday, 31 Might. If the dapper Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the Qatari proprietor of Paris St Germain, was overjoyed that his dream mission has lastly succeeded in ruling over Europe after a protracted wait, it was additionally a few dad reliving a private second of triumph in reminiscence of his late nine-year-old daughter.

Sure, no prizes for guessing that one is referring to the heart-rending story of Luis Enrique, the battle-scarred Spanish coach of PSG and his late daughter Xana. It was in 2019 that Xana misplaced her battle with bone most cancers which pressured Enrique, a compatriot of Pep Guardiola at Barcelona and the Spanish midfield, give up his function as Spanish coach to deal with the shattering private tragedy.

The scrawny determine of Enrique (55), who was his standard animated and passionate self throughout a one-sided ultimate towards Inter Milan as his workforce went on a aim rush, took a pause through the workforce’s wild celebrations. Slipping on a black specifically designed T-shirt, the PSG coach paid tribute to Xana with an illustration displaying the 2 of them holding a PSG flag collectively, a throwback to the well-known picture of Xana planting an enormous Barca flag on the pitch again in 2015 when he first lifted the Champions League trophy as Barcelona’s coach.

Months earlier than this 12 months’s ultimate in January, Enrique revealed his plan to recreate that unforgettable flag-planting second along with his daughter, this time celebrating with the PSG flag. ‘’I’ve a tremendous picture of her planting a Barcelona flag into the turf,’’ he had stated. ‘’I need to have the ability to do the identical with a PSG flag. My daughter received’t be there within the bodily sense, however she will probably be there spiritually and that’s essential to me,’’ he added.