Ousmane Dembélé will be the star acquisition of Paris Saint-Germain this season. While waiting for the club to resolve Kylian Mbappé’s situation, the Barcelona player to date marks the new direction the club’s Qatari owners want to take the team.
At 26 years old, the capital team are recruiting a more mature footballer than the one who left for Barcelona in 2017 after a huge season at Borussia Dortmund and also more established than the one PSG themselves were about to sign in 2021 when their contract with the Catalans expired.
In both cases, the paths of the player, born on May 15, 1997 in the Normandy town of Vernon, and the capital club seemed destined not to cross, but then it seemed highly unlikely that they would, now Dembélé in the Ciudad Condal the right context is when it came out.
With Dembélé, PSG has fulfilled three of the goals it has set this season. On the one hand, the signing of French players, who increase the bond between the team, often treated as mercenaries, and the fans.
In addition, the French attacker fits perfectly into coach Luis Enrique Martínez’s schedule, who wants fast and explosive men on the flanks for his 4-3-3.
Thirdly, PSG are not paying a huge amount, 50 million, which absolve them from sanctions for violating financial “fair play”, pending the Kylian Mbappé situation being resolved.
But in Paris, no one hides the shadows of this player who, due to injuries and a certain football and personal anarchy, has always fallen short of the expectations he raised.
THE BEST AND THE WORST
In six seasons with Barça, he has never scored more than eleven goals, he has lost 119 of 156 games played, he has not made his mark in important events and his relationship with the public has never reached the stage of “capable of the best and worst”.
Dembelé lands in Paris with the taste of a player who has barely uncovered the pot of essences that are supposed to him and from the first minute he will be under the serious magnifying glass of a city sensitive to the surface with the stars.
Especially when his name appears in the Parisian universe in the middle of the revolution because of the Mbappé case and with the threat of the weight of replacing his teammate resting on his shoulders.
The landing of the ex-Barcelonista on the banks of the Seine will depend very much on how this dispute is resolved. If Mbappé continues for another year, he will relieve Dembelé of media attention. If PSG manage to sell him, it can’t be ruled out that they could use that money to sign another world-class star who will divert some of the attention from the Norman.
Dembélé was formed in Breton Rennes, who signed him at the age of 13 and where he showed his worth, which led him to integrate the lower categories of the French team.
After an attempt to leave the French club in 2015, blocked by management, the player made it to the first team at the hands of coach Philippe Montanier, who made him an important part of a side that finished eighth and where he was best was elected. championship promise.
The following year he landed in Dortmund, where he discovered the Champions League and eventually scored 8 goals. With PSG’s signing of Neymar for €222 million, Barcelona saw him invest that sum and forced the player’s hand from the German club to head for his youth team.
The high transfer, 100 million plus 40 in variables, and the Brazilian’s long shadow complicated his arrival, also clouded by information about an unprofessional lifestyle that earned him harsh criticism.
Over the years he became established, although injuries stripped him of the necessary continuity to make an important mark at the Catalan club, where thanks to Xavi Hernández he had found the support he had been looking for for so long.
His career in the national team was also marked by doubts. After becoming a regular for Didier Deschamps, he entered the World Cup in Russia as a starter, but lost that position after the first game and never regained it.
He restored the starting position in the World Cup in Qatar, although he did not make the decisive leap in quality and weight in the team that he had set himself as a goal.
Three leagues (2018, 2019 and 2023) and two cups (2018 and 2021) with Barça and another (2017) with Borussia are on his record. EFE
Source: El heraldo
I’m George Gonzalez, a professional journalist and author at The Nation View. With more than 5 years of experience in the field, I specialize in covering sports news for various print media outlets. My passion for writing has enabled me to craft stories that capture the attention of readers all over the world.
