The skies dimmed on Saturday evening as PSG’s last remaining star exited the stage. Kylian Mbappé’s light has only flickered in recent months and Luis Enrique is right to harbour hopes of a brighter future without him. In Paris, the city of light, there is a perception that the fewer stars there are, the better. In recent history, the club has signed plenty without ever reaching the next level. Ronaldinho and Jay-Jay Okocha arrived in the late 1990s and early 2000s to elevate the club. By the mid 2000s, PSG had regressed. Similarly, when Neymar and Mbappé signed in 2017, and then Lionel Messi joined them four years later, the club hoped they would add to their domestic dominance by bringing an elusive Champions League title, the holy grail in the eyes of the club’s QSI owners. Despite reaching the final in 2020, PSG are yet to reach that objective. Having been perceived as the solution to PSG’s woes in Europe, by the time Neymar and Messi departed last summer – and even earlier than that – they were seen as the problem and a barrier to the club’s progress. “We no longer want flashy, bling-bling. It’s the end of the glitter,” proclaimed PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi in 2022. Mbappé was the last remnant of that failed “bling-bling” era and, as was the case with Messi and Neymar, there is an unmistakable impression that some around the club will be happier without him. “You can’t replace him! Don’t even go looking,” said Luis Enrique after Mbappé’s last game in a PSG shirt, a 2-1 win against Lyon in the Coupe de France final on Saturday. The manager’s statement was a declaration of Mbappé’s uniqueness but it was also an instruction. He doesn’t want another Mbappé. Unusually, Mbappé was not the main topic of conversation in the build-up to the game. There had been fears of clashes between PSG and Lyon fans before the match at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy in Lille and those concerns were realised at the toll booth at Fresnes-lès-Montauban, 25 miles away on the motorway. The specifics of the confrontation are not yet entirely clear but two people were severely injured, four buses were damaged and one bus carrying supporters to the ground was set alight, the fire then spreading to the now-charred toll booth. But Mbappé manages to permeate any and every topic, whether it be police chiefs or politicians doing the talking. “I call on the match to pass without incident. It’s the 106th Coupe de France final, an event in which all clubs, including amateur clubs, have all played. There are hundreds of thousands of people watching the match on television tonight. It’s a football festival and, in addition, a great French player will play his final match for a French team, so let’s honour football,” said Bertrand Gaume, the chief of police in the region, in response to the unrest, which thankfully did not spill into the stadium. In the tunnel, president Emmanuel Macron spoke briefly with both sets of players. Most didn’t get more than a “Comment allez-vous?” and a “bon match!” but there was no surprise that, when it came to Mbappé, the conversation was much lengthier and warmer. Unlike the other conversations, Macron lowered his voice to a whisper, concealing the nature of their discussion – more than just pleasantries were exchanged. Sometimes through no fault of his own, Mbappé dominates the landscape at PSG. In many ways he has come to represent the antithesis of the club’s new direction under Luis Enrique. The organisation being bigger than just one player has merely been a mantra in recent years, but it is now becoming a reality. PSG have been mired in a battle to eclipse Mbappé in recent months but it has been a losing battle – the embrace between the France captain and the president tells its own story. In his absence, the club will be bigger than any individual, as Al-Khelaifi and Luis Enrique have insisted, and that is primarily to the benefit of the latter, who insists that he can forge a better team without Mbappé. “I know that if everything goes well, we will have a better team than this year, in every aspect: offensively, defensively, tactically. I have no doubt about that,” said Luis Enrique in February, after it became clear that Mbappé’s future did not lie at the Parc des Princes. Mbappé, seemingly without PSG’s forewarning, made his departure official earlier this month, inciting Luis Enrique to double down on his argument: “Football is a sufficiently complex sport that the teams with the best players don’t always win. I’ll repeat that I am convinced that, regardless of the players that are here or not, we will be better next year.” Luis Enrique’s musings on the triumph of the collective over the individual fit with a wider trend in European football, where tactical ideals reign supreme. Carlo Ancelotti is the only major proponent of the alternative. “An intelligent manager is one who adapts the game to the characteristics of his players,” says the Italian. However, there is no doubting the importance of Mbappé at PSG. While Luis Enrique chose the waspish and increasingly effective midfielder Vitinha as his player of the season – and he has a case – there is no denying Mbappé’s considerable contribution. It was his 27 league goals that helped them win Ligue 1 at a canter – the latest of his six consecutive golden boots. With Luis Enrique preparing his side for life without Mbappé in recent weeks, the Frenchman has flitted in and out of the side, only rarely showing glimpses of his finest form – and PSG have rarely looked at their best. The manager’s experimentation has contributed to the recent inconsistency, a necessary evil in the eyes of Luis Enrique, who is projecting more long term. That experimentation has perhaps now started to bear fruit. Mbappé was re-integrated into the side for PSG’s victory over Lyon, the most in-form team in Ligue 1 in 2024, but he was not the reason they triumphed. In what was a controlled, tactically astute display, especially in the dying moments, a number of individuals impressed – notably Ousmane Dembélé and Fabián Ruiz – but it was a triumph of the collective. After the match for one brief and final moment, attention turned back to one man: Mbappé. After his guard of honour, he had time to reflect. “All of the memories came back, the nostalgia,” said Mbappé in his final post-match interview. PSG may not look back on this era with such nostalgia given that they have not yet accomplished their major objective – an objective that Luis Enrique is more confident of achieving without his now-departed star.