PARIS — Another Uefa Champions League season gets going this week with the beginning of the league phase as Paris Saint-Germain bid to join the tiny band of clubs to have won the competition three years running.

PSG successfully defended their title last season when they beat Arsenal on penalties in Budapest, retaining the trophy they won for the first time in their history 12 months earlier.

Luis Enrique’s side have already secured their status as one of the competition’s greatest teams by winning it back-to-back, something only Real Madrid had previously achieved since the inception of the modern Champions League in 1992.

Winning three in a row would be on another level entirely. Real did exactly that under Zinedine Zidane between 2016 and 2018, The only other teams to manage such a feat are Ajax (1971-73) and Bayern Munich (1974-76), while Madrid also won the first five editions of the European Cup from 1956 to 1960.

“Our objectives are clear. I want to win important trophies and there are none more important than the Champions League,” said Luis Enrique, who also led Barcelona to glory in 2015.

The back-to-back titles for the French giants have coincided with the introduction of the new Champions League format, with 36 teams in the league phase now playing eight games against eight different opponents.

The Parisians struggled in the league phase in each of the last two campaigns, finishing outside the top eight and having to come through the additional play-off round to make the last 16.

Tough draws were partly responsible for that, and PSG will face some familiar opponents this time in Manchester City, Barcelona and Aston Villa.

With each passing year, the prospect of a team other than one of Europe’s super clubs winning the Champions League seems more remote.