There was a passage of play during the first half of Paris Saint-Germain’s victory over Rennes last week that suited the narrative about Ousmane Dembele.
He receives the ball outside the penalty area and begins to weave a chance out of nothing.
He skips past midfielder Ludovic Blas, then coaxes out defender Arthur Theate and beats him, too. He tiptoes on, flicking the ball beyond Baptiste Santamaria and then, just as two more defenders converge… lets fly on a bobbling ball, sending it miles over the bar.
On the touchline, Rennes head coach Julien Stephan had seen it all before. The 43-year-old spent his formative years as a coach in the academy of his club and, during that time, witnessed the raw potential of Dembele. He is arguably Rennes’ most eye-catching academy product of the modern era.
Last Wednesday, Stephan’s Rennes wanted to halt PSG’s pursuit of an unprecedented treble by triumphing in the Coupe de France semi-final but, to do so, they had to stop Dembele, a player fizzing with confidence and at the heart of this emerging PSG team under coach Luis Enrique. At times, especially in the first half, Dembele was simply unplayable.
“When I’m asked about Ousmane, it’s always about his weaknesses — I always respond by talking about his qualities because he is an extraordinary player,” said Stephan after the match. “If he was a better finisher, he could have won a Ballon d’Or by now.
“In terms of knocking opponents off balance, dribbling and his ability to create spaces, he is an exceptional player.”
Dembele runs at Rennes’ Desire Doue (Franco Arland/Getty Images)
On paper, Dembele’s goal and assists numbers have not set the world alight since he signed from Barcelona last summer — he has managed one goal and 13 assists from 34 appearances — but they do not tell the full story of his influence at PSG.
As the season reaches its pinch point and Dembele, now 26, prepares to face his former club in a Champions League quarter-final, he is playing some of the most influential football of his career.
“I’ve known Ousmane Dembele from my time at Barcelona and he was at Rennes,” said Luis Enrique this season. “That is why I wanted to bring him here and why the club wanted him. He didn’t want to come to Barcelona back then because there was a lot of competition. He is a different player now. I know him better, more personally.
“He is professional. He always wants the ball, he is never scared of doing things or risking criticism. He has a lot of confidence. It is great to have a player with his attributes. You are all very focused on assists and goals, but he does much more for the team. That is always the most important thing.
“He always frees up one, two or three team-mates with his movement, the way he takes up space. He is the best player in the world at beating defenders and unsettling defences.”
Dembele’s ability is established. On the ball, he is impossible to read, capable of dribbling with his right or left foot, is quick and, when that is all combined with his speed of thought, defenders have no time to set themselves before he breezes by. He is a glider who always seems to have the wind behind him.
Scoring goals remains an area to be improved but, at PSG, his role in the team is about provision rather than cutting edge. He is the player through which all PSG attacks are funnelled, the forward who often provides the pass before the pass.
Dembele and Kylian Mbappe at PSG’s training session before the Barcelona tie (Franck Fife/AFP via Getty Images)
The underlying data backs this up.
He is PSG’s most important ball progresser, with the most ‘progressive carries’ per 90 minutes and second only to Achraf Hakimi for ‘progressive passes’ — attacking-half passes or dribbles that move the ball at least 10 yards closer to the opponents’ goal line or into the penalty area — according to data collated by FBRef.
Crucially, no one receives more progressive passes, too — he has an average of 15.2 ‘progressive receptions’ per game. It is very rare for a player to be a progressive-action-triple-threat, both on and off the ball.
For shot-creating actions — involving two ‘actions’ before a shot (eg, the pass before the pass) — Dembele leads the way by a large margin, with a total of 108 to Kylian Mbappe’s 86. This is despite having fewer minutes (1,933 to 1,342) of game time under his belt. He also leads the way for goal-creating actions, with 15.
This all speaks of an attacking influence from a deeper role, although he is still the team’s chief creator.
Dembele has more non-penalty expected goals (xG) and expected assists (9.8) than any PSG player other than Mbappe, and he is the team’s leader for expected assists (5.3), passes into the penalty area (50) and successful dribbles (58). Not surprisingly, PSG have been better when he is on the pitch.
He has played 55 per cent of the team’s Ligue 1 minutes, and their xG difference per 90 minutes is +0.35 better with him than without him.
Unsurprisingly, Luis Enrique tries to put him on the ball as much as possible. For most of the season, Dembele has played off the right, allowing Achraf Hakimi to surge forward on the overlap.
But in the last-16 tie with Real Sociedad, a tactical tweak to move Dembele into a No 10 role, which he reprised in Le Classique late last month against Marseille, was a big reason PSG cruised to victory.
“It’s a basic concept: the need to get the best players touching the ball a lot,” said Luis Enrique. “Dembele is one of the best. He can take players on. He is the best in the world at that. You can go out wide or go down the middle and, looking at the pressing game of Real Sociedad, our idea was to generate numerical advantages.
“We managed that through Ousmane.”
Against Barcelona, he may well resume on the right, with Hakimi suspended and Nordi Mukiele out with a concussion.
Dembele’s tactical versatility makes him the most valuable of Luis Enrique’s assets, and his growing importance is the product of a quick adaptation to life in Paris.
To begin with, like his team-mates, he had a more muted and confined role, as they all adjusted to the particular demands of the new coach. Dembele, who spent the first two months at PSG living in a hotel, also had to adjust to French football.
“I had to adapt, especially as Ligue 1 has changed enormously,” he told Le Parisien in February. “The championship is much stronger than when I left.”
It took him until November to score his first goal. As one source — speaking anonymously to protect relationships, as with others in this piece — close to the player put it: “He was initially obsessed with scoring, it put pressure on him. But that’s changed as the season has gone on.”
Luis Enrique watches Dembele burst beyond Nantes’ Nicolas Cozza (Jean Catuffe/Getty Images)
Off the field, Dembele’s easy-going personality made him a quick fit.
He had good connections with his France international team-mates — Mbappe, Randal Kolo-Muani and Lucas Hernandez — but his knowledge of Spanish helped him assimilate and strike up relationships quickly with others. Spanish is a key language in the dressing room at Parc des Princes, from the coaching staff downwards.
He has helped others, like Lucas Beraldo — the Brazilian signed from Sao Paulo in the summer — to settle. “He’s a very nice guy and able to speak with everyone,” says a source at PSG. “He is always positive. It’s easy to create a relationship with him.”
Tactically, those close to Dembele say he could adjust to Luis Enrique’s demands quickly because he is a bit of a football obsessive. He watches the top five leagues in Europe regularly, as well as, curiously, the English Championship.
“Especially Sunderland because I know the owner, Kyril Louis-Dreyfus,” he told Le Parisien.
Key to his success, though, has been consistency of availability. His only absence through injury has been with a punctured eardrum suffered before a trip to Montpellier last month.
At Barcelona, he featured in only 37 per cent of their league matches — 127 out of 228 possible games. At PSG, he has featured in all but four league games.
“He works a lot in the gym,” says a PSG source. “He has his own staff. He’s mature. He learned a lot at Barcelona.”
Dembele still uses the same personal staff — the physio Jean-Baptiste Duault and Salah Ghaidi, a former sprinter — that he took on at Barcelona three years ago and that has made a difference. They are based in Paris, which is one benefit of returning. In 2021, Ghaidi told L’Equipe: “It’s like having a Formula One car in your hands. We are here to take care of him and help him optimise his performance.”
PSG have also managed his minutes. He has only finished 90 minutes in the league four times. There has been a lot of focus on Mbappe’s substitutions lately, particularly after he informed the club that he will leave at the end of the season. But, equally, Dembele has been rotated often, too.
He started against Rennes in the Cup semi-final last week and against Marseille, but was on the bench for the match against Clermont on Saturday and was a sub, too, against Reims and Monaco last month.
“We think that the best training session is the matches themselves, but we have to control the playing time, especially for explosive players like Dembele or Mbappe because they have incredible pace and that can also be an injury risk,” said Luis Enrique. “So we will send out the best team and players will get more or fewer minutes based on our opinion.”
Dembele forged a strong bond with Xavi at Barcelona (David Ramos/Getty Images)
Much of his injury issues were long resolved at Barcelona, though, and coach Xavi played his role in that — one reason Dembele retains a good relationship with him.
His departure from Barcelona certainly hurt Xavi, a coach who, like Rennes’ Stephane, could always see his potential. In November 2021, shortly after he was appointed head coach, Xavi said the Frenchman could become “the best right-winger in the world”.
Departing Barcelona was not anticipated last summer because, according to those close to the player, he was genuinely happy at the club — but when PSG’s offer was put on the table, Dembele’s past disputes with Barcelona over his contract came to the fore.
Before signing a two-year deal in 2022, Dembele was publicly stopped from playing until his future was resolved and he was conscious that, with that contract set to expire this summer (2024), the same could happen again. There was concern, too, about the arrival of Deco, Barcelona’s new sporting director and the former agent of fellow winger Raphinha.
Fundamentally, beyond the obvious better financial terms and being close to his family again — they live in Evreux, an hour from Paris — the chance to focus on football rather than lurching back into off-field politics was a factor. PSG may not seem the obvious choice for that, but their new project has quelled the noise while Mbappe takes much of the spotlight.
Those close to Dembele say he has no hard feelings when it comes to Barcelona — he supported them growing up and his departure does not change that. He still keeps in touch with former team-mates, such as Gavi.
“We usually chat before games,” he said in an interview with UEFA this week. For PSG, the €50million (£42.9m, $54.9m) transfer is regarded as a huge success, with senior club sources calling the deal “exceptional”.
Dembele will face Barcelona in the Champions League as an opponent rather than a team-mate. He is approaching his peak, both in terms of fitness and mentality.
Barcelona did not want him to leave last summer and on Wednesday, Dembele may hurt them again.
Additional reporting: Pol Ballus
(Top photo: Aurelien Meunier – PSG/PSG via Getty Images)
