More than €150m spent, a raft of senior players moved on and five new faces through the door — and when L’Equipe sat down after the window to name the strongest XI at every Ligue 1 club, the PSG strongest XI for 2026/27 was the easiest team sheet in France to fill in. Nothing has changed.
The French daily’s post-deadline feature, reported in English by PSG Talk, ran through all 18 clubs. In Paris, the exercise was close to a formality: Luis Enrique’s first-choice team is the same one that finished last season as back-to-back European champions.
Why the PSG strongest XI didn’t move
Because it did not need to. Paris are the reigning Champions League holders, having won the competition in 2024/25 and retained it in 2025/26. You do not tear up a side that has just done that, and Luis Campos did not try to.
What the club did instead was trade around the edges. The starters stayed; the layer underneath them was rebuilt almost wholesale.
A depth summer, not a rebuild
The incomings all arrived with a case for the future rather than a promise of a shirt this weekend. Maghnes Akliouche came from Monaco for a reported €50m, Ferran Torres from Barcelona for around €48.5m, Mika Godts from Ajax for a fee in the region of €45m, with Lucas Digne returning from Aston Villa and goalkeeper Alessandro Longoni joining on a free.
The exits tell the same story from the other direction. Goncalo Ramos went to AC Milan, Randal Kolo Muani to Juventus, Lee Kang-in to Atletico Madrid, and then deadline day took Bradley Barcola to Liverpool and Ibrahim Mbaye to Aston Villa for €55m, with Renato Sanches leaving after his contract was terminated by mutual consent.
Add it up and PSG sold four attackers and a midfielder without weakening the eleven that starts European nights. That is either brilliant squad management or a warning sign, depending on how charitable you feel — and it is why L’Equipe’s exercise produced a shrug in Paris and headlines everywhere else.
The one debate the feature leaves open
Goalkeeper. PSG Talk’s read of the summer is that it remains the obvious soft spot in an otherwise elite group, with Lucas Chevalier in possession of the gloves, Matvey Safonov behind him and Longoni added as a third option. It is the one line of the team sheet where the argument is about the incumbent rather than the alternatives.
Everywhere else the hierarchy is settled: Achraf Hakimi and Nuno Mendes at full-back, Marquinhos captaining a centre-back group that also holds Willian Pacho and Illia Zabarnyi, Vitinha and Joao Neves running the midfield, and a front line built around Ousmane Dembele, Desire Doue and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.
The risk in standing still
An unchanged first eleven is a compliment and an exposure at the same time. Paris have four fronts to fight this season — a Ligue 1 title, a Champions League defence as holders, the domestic cups and a FIFA Intercontinental Cup final in December — and the whole point of spending €150m on the second tier of the squad is that the first tier cannot play every match.
Akliouche, Torres and Godts were not signed to sit. They were signed so that the strongest XI does not have to be the only XI, which is a different and much harder thing to build.
The theory gets tested quickly. Monaco — who sold Akliouche to Paris this summer — visit the Parc des Princes next, and you can read our PSG vs Monaco preview or the full PSG squad list for 2026/27 for the group Luis Enrique is picking from.
