It was one of the enduring images of the Champions League final. Ousmane Dembele, ready in a sprinting position, awaiting every Inter goal-kick. He did not score in Munich but somehow still managed to epitomise Paris Saint-Germain’s evolution.
“That is what it means to lead a team,” Luis Enrique later enthused. “Have you seen how he pressed? Tell me a nine in Europe who presses the goalkeeper and the centre-back like that?” Dembele puts it succinctly. “I have changed a lot of things in my game.”
His own transformation is among the more remarkable individual redemption stories in football right now – and Champions League victory is unlikely to be the end of it for Dembele. Next month, he could well be named as the winner of the men’s Ballon d’Or.
It would be deserved. His pressing, so astonishing in that final, might be the only metric that he did not top last season. A finisher and a creator for PSG, Dembele was out on his own as the most impactful player in European football. Just look at this scatter graph…
And what is so amazing about all of this is that nobody really expected it. Not now, at least. Maybe when he was a teenager at Rennes and their then sporting director Mikael Silvestre was calling him the most exciting young player since Cristiano Ronaldo.
Perhaps even some years later when Barcelona made him the second most expensive player in history. But even then the doubts about his attitude were emerging. It has taken him until 28 to realise his potential after what he himself calls the wasted years.
As recently as 2023, one recalls being in one of Borussia Dortmund’s offices, the club that sold Dembele to Barca in 2017, listening to Lothar Matthaus opine on why Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz were sure to flourish. Mentality and support, he explained.
“We have different examples,” said the 1990 Ballon d’Or winner. “Dembele… Crazy.” He then paused for effect before really accentuating that final word. “Crazy.” There was no pushback among the journalists in the room. Everybody understood his meaning.
In Dortmund, the manner of his exit coloured his reputation. “He simply declines to do his job,” said club CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke. “He can’t behave this way,” said one team-mate. “He does not have the right to do what he has done,” agreed another.
At Barcelona, the pattern continued amid much greater scrutiny from the Catalan press. There were reports of a particularly unhelpful entourage, of him being late for team meetings, of him playing video games late at night, of him neglecting his diet.
In a comment that tallies with Matthaus’ remarks contrasting his environment with that of Musiala and Wirtz, Dembele’s former chef – whom he fired – talked of the player having “no structure around him” and this was seen as a factor in his poor injury record.
Dembele has since acknowledged that it led to him “losing five years of his life” because of his failure to appreciate the importance of preparation. The talent was still enough to keep him in the show, just not enough to make him the true star of it.
Ousmane Dembele trudges off after being substituted in the World Cup final
Nothing illustrates that quite like his role in the biggest and best game of them all, the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar. Dembele gave away a penalty and was hauled off before half-time. A career being played out in the spotlight but somehow still passing him by.
There is no doubt that Luis Enrique has helped. The PSG coach has not shied away from demanding more from Dembele. “You have to go deeper and deeper to get the best version of Ousmane,” he has explained. “We have had to do and say difficult things.”
But let us be careful not to deny Dembele agency here. It is the player himself who has had to make the adjustments. After all, Luis Enrique was unable to spark the same change in Kylian Mbappe. Dembele is the one who has taken his game to another level.
“If you want to be a great player, you have to work. Your talent is not enough. I did not know that before.” His belated realisation has made for one of the most beautiful turnarounds in football because this sort of mid-career rise just does not happen.
Actors, musicians, presenters and politicians, they might be able to come back into fashion, maybe even redeem themselves in the next act, but football is a young person’s game and there is rarely the time for comebacks. Figure it all out too late and it is gone.
Well, leopards might not change their spots but they are perfectly evolved predators, ruthless hunters. With every goal-kick that Dembele chases down, he underlines the change in him. Joining Matthaus as a Ballon d’Or winner would be a fitting next step.
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