Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City's Champions League clash brings former colleagues and friends Luis Enrique and Pep Guardiola head-to-head, but the PSG manager said on Tuesday that he hopes it won't be the most important game of their season.
Guardiola and Luis Enrique played together at Barcelona and with Spain, and when Guardiola was Barça manager, the now-PSG coach was in charge of the Barcelona B team, and their meeting in Paris comes at a difficult time for the two friends.
Both managers have struggled in the Champions League this season, with PSG on seven points and 25th in the standings, one place outside the knockout phase playoff zone, while City are one point ahead in 22nd.
"Tomorrow is a special match, not just because of the importance for the two teams but because I will be up against a friend who I played with for many years and we crossed paths as coaches," Luis Enrique told reporters ahead of Wednesday's game.
"I hope the most important match is not the one against Manchester City, I hope it will be in the next phase of the competition at a very high level with the trophy at stake."
The PSG boss knows, however, that the penultimate game of the league phase against City could be crucial in deciding the future of both clubs in the competition.
"I hope to have other more important games, but this is a special game because in the new format of the Champions League I don't think anyone could predict that City would have this number of points ahead of match day seven," he said.
"But that is football and that is the new format. Right now we don't know how many points we will need to qualify, nobody can say. Maybe after this match day we will know that."
PSG have suffered losses away to Arsenal and Bayern Munich this season, but the coach sees the draw against PSV Eindhoven and defeat by Atlético Madrid, both of which came at home, as the games which have really cost them.
"We should have won the games against PSV and Atlético at home. That is the reality," Luis Enrique said.
"On the pitch, they were two games we should have won but football isn't as simple as that. With those five points we would already be qualifying for the next round."