It was one of the lasting images of the final of the Champions League. Ousmane Dembele, ready in a sprinting position, awaiting any interdoal kick. He did not score in Munich, but somehow managed to embody the evolution of Paris Saint-Germain.
“That is what it means to lead a team,” Luis Enrique left enthusiastically later. “Have you seen how he pressed? Tell me a nine in Europe that presses the keeper and the middle behind?” Dembele makes it concise. “I have changed many things in my game.”
His own transformation is one of the more remarkable individual redemption stories in football at the moment – and the victory of the Champions League is probably not the end for Dembele. Next month he could be mentioned as the winner of Messrs Ballon d'Or.
It would earn. His urgent, so amazing in that final, is perhaps the only statistics he was not at the top last season. A Finisher and a maker for PSG, Dembele was only the most impactful player in European football. Take a look at this spreading graph …
And what this is so great is that nobody really expected it. At least not, at least. Perhaps when he was a teenager at Rennes and their then sports director Mikael Silvestre called him the most exciting young player since Cristiano Ronaldo.
Perhaps even a few years later, when Barcelona made him the second most expensive player in history. But even then the doubts about his attitude emerged. It took him to 28 to realize his potential after what he calls the wasted years.
Already in 2023 it was remembered that he was in one of the offices of Borussia Dortmund, the club that Dembele sold to Barca in 2017, listening to Lothar Matthaus Opin about why Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz would certainly flourish. Mentality and support, he explained.
“We have several examples,” said the Ballon d'Or winner of 1990. “Dembele … crazy.” He then paused for effect before he really accentuated that last word. “Crazy.” There was no pushback among the journalists in the room. Everyone understood their meaning.
In Dortmund, the way his exit turned his reputation. “He just refuses to do his job,” said Club CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke. “He can't behave this way,” said a teammate. “He does not have the right to do what he did,” someone else agreed.
In Barcelona the pattern continued in the midst of much larger research by the Catalan press. There were reports of a particularly useless entourage that he was too late for team meetings that he played video games late in the evening that he neglected his diet.
In a comment that corresponds to Matthaus' comments that contrast his surroundings with those of Musiala and Wirtz, Dembele's former chef – who he shot – spoke about the player who had “no structure around him” and this was seen as a factor in his bad injury.
Since then, Dembele has acknowledged that it led him to “lose 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.
Nothing illustrates that exactly like his role in the largest and best game of all, the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar. Dembele gave away a penalty and was removed before the break. A career that is played in the spotlight but still passes him by somehow.
There is no doubt that Luis Enrique helped. The PSG coach has not been removed to demand more from Dembele. “You have to get deeper and deeper to get the best version of Ousmane,” he explained. “We had to do and say difficult things.”
But let's be careful not to deny Dembele Agency here. It is the player himself who had to make the adjustments. After all, Luis Enrique was unable to cause the same change in Kylian Mbappe. Dembele is the one who brought his game to another level.
“If you want to be a great player, you have to work. Your talent is not enough. I didn't know that before.” His late realization has provided one of the most beautiful turnarounds in football, because this kind of increase in the Midden -Career simply does not happen.
Actors, musicians, presenters and politicians, they might be able to get back into fashion, perhaps even redeem even in the next act, but football is the game of a young person and there is rarely time for comebacks. Consider it all too late and it's gone.
Well, leopards may not change their spots, but they are perfectly developed predators, ruthless hunters. With every goals that Dembele pursues, he underlines the change in him. Participating in Matthaus as a balloon d'Or winner would be a suitable next step.