Paris Saint-Germain have been transformed since Qatar Sports Investments bought the club in June 2011, and the men in the dugout tell that story as clearly as the trophy cabinet does. Eight PSG managers have taken charge in that time, from a caretaker-turned-title-challenger to the coach who made Paris back-to-back European champions. Here is every one of them, and what they actually delivered.
Antoine Kombouare (2009-2011)
Kombouare was the man in the chair when QSI arrived, and he is the forgotten figure of the modern era. A former Paris defender, he won the Coupe de France in 2010 and had the club top of Ligue 1 at the winter break in December 2011 — and was sacked anyway. It set the tone for what followed: at PSG, position in the table has never been the only measure.
Carlo Ancelotti (2011-2013)
The first marquee appointment. Ancelotti arrived in December 2011, missed out on the 2011/12 title to Montpellier, then won Ligue 1 in 2012/13 — the club’s first championship since 1994 and the moment the new project stopped being theoretical. He left for Real Madrid that summer, having also overseen the arrivals of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Thiago Silva.
Laurent Blanc (2013-2016)
Statistically, one of the most successful of all PSG managers. Blanc won three consecutive Ligue 1 titles and swept every available domestic trophy in both 2014/15 and 2015/16, the second of those on a record 96-point haul. What he never did was crack Europe: three straight Champions League quarter-final exits, the last of them to Manchester City in 2016, and that cost him his job.
Unai Emery (2016-2018)
Emery’s two seasons are remembered for one night. Paris beat Barcelona 4-0 at home in the 2017 last 16 and then lost 6-1 at the Camp Nou — the Remontada, still the heaviest psychological blow of the QSI era. He also lost the 2016/17 league title to Monaco before reclaiming it in 2017/18, and he was the coach handed the Neymar and Kylian Mbappe signings in the summer of 2017.
Thomas Tuchel (2018-2020)
The German took Paris further in Europe than anyone before him. Tuchel won Ligue 1 twice, completed a clean sweep of the domestic trophies in the COVID-disrupted 2019/20 campaign, and reached the club’s first Champions League final in Lisbon, losing 1-0 to Bayern Munich. He was dismissed a few months later, in December 2020.
Mauricio Pochettino (2021-2022)
A former Paris player returning as coach, and a spell defined more by signings than by football. Pochettino won the Trophee des Champions and the Coupe de France in his first half-season, finished second to Lille in Ligue 1, and reached the 2021 Champions League semi-finals. He then presided over the arrivals of Lionel Messi, Sergio Ramos, Gianluigi Donnarumma and Achraf Hakimi, won the 2021/22 title, and went out of Europe to Real Madrid in the last 16. It was not enough.
Christophe Galtier (2022-2023)
One season, one league title — the club’s 11th, a French record at the time — and one more last-16 European exit, this time to Bayern. Galtier’s Paris were built around a front three of Messi, Neymar and Mbappe and looked increasingly like a team of individuals. He was gone after twelve months.
Luis Enrique (2023-present)
The Spaniard is the answer to the question every PSG manager before him failed. Appointed in July 2023, Luis Enrique rebuilt the squad around collective structure rather than superstar names, winning Ligue 1 in each of his first two seasons and completing the 2024/25 treble with a 5-0 win over Inter in the Champions League final in Munich. Paris then retained the trophy in 2025/26, making them one of only nine clubs ever to defend the European Cup and only the second to do it in the Champions League era after Real Madrid.
He has since signed a contract extension running to 2030, which is its own kind of statement at a club that has changed head coach seven times in fifteen years.
What the PSG managers list actually shows
Two patterns jump out. The first is that domestic success has never bought a PSG manager much time: Blanc won three titles and left, Galtier won one and left, Kombouare was top of the table when he was sacked. The second is that the club’s hiring logic shifted decisively around 2023. Ancelotti, Emery, Tuchel, Pochettino and Galtier were all, in different ways, asked to manage a collection of galacticos. Luis Enrique was asked to build a team — and that is the version of Paris that finally won the thing.
It is worth remembering that when the current season’s start is held up as evidence of decline. Paris are winless in Ligue 1 after three matches and seven points behind Monaco, and the noise around the Parc has grown accordingly. Every coach on this list met that noise sooner or later. Only one of them has answered it with two European Cups.
Club honours and appointment dates per the official Paris Saint-Germain website. For more background, see our guides to how many Champions Leagues PSG have won and how many Ligue 1 titles PSG have won.
