Why PSG’s pummeling of Real Madrid shouldn’t be alarming or surprising

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — On paper, it was superclub against superclub, Real Madrid against Paris Saint-Germain, filthy rich against limitlessly rich. It was 2025 European champions against 2024 champions. It was two of the five most valuable squads, and two of the top three moneymaking clubs, in soccer.

So it was surprising, perhaps even stunning, that PSG pumped four goals past Real Madrid, and pounded the longtime kings of Europe, 4-0, in a Club World Cup semifinal.

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But it shouldn’t have been.

“They're only getting started with their new head coach,” PSG manager Luis Enrique said, through an interpreter, of Madrid after Wednesday’s game. “And we have already been working on this for two years. So, these are different situations.”

The two clubs are similar in stature, similar in talent, similar in ambition. But on the field, on July 9, 2025, one is a potent final product; the other is embryonic. One is a finely tuned 11-piece machine. The other was, more or less, 11 pieces.

Xabi Alonso is trying to construct something with them. When he took over as Real Madrid’s head coach last month, he immediately stressed the importance of “balance” and “commitment.” In modern soccer, he said, “everyone must be involved in every phase.” He’d inherited a team that was disjointed, with attackers who didn’t defend and defenders who compensated. He wanted to change that. “I want a team that’s united,” he said.

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He wants, in other words, what PSG has.

A “group [that all] goes in the same direction,” as PSG fullback Achraf Hakimi said Wednesday.

“The success we've had this year,” Fabián Ruiz said in Spanish, “is the collective work of all the players.”

“We all work together,” Enrique said. “That's the idea. On attack, and on defense.”

Alonso and Real Madrid fans wanted it right away, but they know he’ll need time to build it. That’s what Enrique did over the past two years. That’s what Alonso hasn’t been able to do, because he was thrown right into a competition, this Club World Cup, after less than two weeks with his new players on the training ground.

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“These are two different projects,” Enrique said through an interpreter. “Xabi's has just begun. Xabi has shown his level [as a coach] with other teams. But of course, they need some time, they need a preseason. There's no analysis to be done here, no assessment. They haven't had a chance to work.”

So, why didn’t we see this beatdown coming? Because there are countless examples in soccer of talent winning out. There have been thousands of games decided in a few brief moments, moments in which players like Kylian Mbappé and Vinicius Junior thrive, often against the broader flow of play.

But at this uber-elite level, the talent must be connected — by tactics, by supporting casts, by shared identities and visions.

On Wednesday, “the key was the way that we faced the game ... the clear way that we had in our mind what to do,” PSG midfielder Vitinha said. “Like every game, we always try to do the same, to press every time, to control the game when we have the ball.”

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They, too, have brilliant players, but they shut down Madrid “thanks to the collective effort of the team,” Hakimi said.

So it’s no wonder that Alonso wants to shape Real Madrid in a similar mold. That’s not to say his Blancos will press as ravenously as PSG. That’s not to say his fullbacks will attack as purposefully as PSG’s do. He is his own man with his own ideas and unique personnel at his disposal. This is not to say Real Madrid is trying to become PSG.

But the way that Enrique tore down a star-driven squad to build a nearly unbeatable one?

The way he “put the team before everyone,” as Hakimi said Wednesday?

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The way he implores and requires his best attacking players to defend, and his best defensive players to attack, and his midfielders to do everything?

That is the shift that Alonso is trying to engineer.

“We want to build a team. A team that plays as a unit, with everyone playing together, everyone being involved with that feeling and that spirit,” Alonso said.

He simply hasn’t yet had an opportunity to engineer it. He suggested multiple times Wednesday that the team’s belated start of preseason later this month, after a brief vacation, will be like “starting from scratch.” This Club World Cup, therefore, was something less than scratch. As much as he tried to introduce his ideas, short-term goals overrode them. Four wins and a draw, in the end, were a decent haul.

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A semifinal against the world’s best team, though — a team that multiple reporters labeled “unbeatable” Wednesday, a team on track to win every winnable trophy in 2025 — was a step too far.

“Today,” Alonso said, “we must accept that [PSG] are in a really good moment, and we are starting out a new stage.”

PSG, on the other hand, has “been working with [the same] coach for two years, with the same philosophy,” as Hakimi said. “And the truth is, we're happy with how things are going, with the dynamics of the team. We feel quite good. And we want to continue making history.”