At the Parc des Princes,
Tut tut the haters! So, does Kiki never score a goal? Ousmane Dembélé may have taken a long time to find the net with PSG but his GPS didn’t mess with him on Friday evening against Monaco, sending him to clear Köhn’s top corner from a tight angle. The finish is magnificent, at least as much as the design, with that delicious pigeon-wing control to get the right way. All that remained was to switch to second gear and leave Magassa on the side of the road before putting on a praloche and closing his eyes. “A 100% Dembélé goal,” his coach, Luis Enrique, will say with a smile.
But if this first goal was expected, it’s not even what we will remember most about Dembouze’s match. It was just a bonus. The winger stood out above all for his excessive activity during the 71 minutes he played. There is its direct impact on the score, with his shot poorly repelled by Köhn at the origin of the opening score for Gonçalo Ramos and the peno that he will seek for the second goal, signed Kylian Mbappé, and there also has everything else.
The heart of the offensive system
He spent his time tormenting poor Jakobs and Magassa on his right side, with his dribbles, his thrusts, and his accuracy. Because the former Barça player was not content with making hooks and pushing the ball, he refocused when necessary, he opened spaces thanks to his ball catches and took the opportunity to find his partners in the right tempo, like when he launched Hakimi in the 2nd minute of play for the first hot situation of the match.
It’s quite simple, we don’t remember seeing him achieve such a complete performance. In any case, it is in line with what Dembélé has been producing for a few weeks now. With each match he gains a little more depth in the Parisian collective, of which he is clearly today the number 1 offensive danger in the creation. The Team underlined in a paper published Friday, with supporting statistics, it is mainly he who accelerates the game to get out of static phases and carry the ball into the opponent’s last 30 meters. His ball handling, his dribbling, his speed and the way he combines with Hakimi are the heart of Luis Enrique’s offensive system, and allow Mbappé to have a little more freedom on the other side of the field. .
“The most unbalanced player in the world”
At a press conference, the Spanish coach was quick to say all the good things he thought of his protégé’s match. “Since day one, I’ve been happy with him. He is the most unbalanced player in the world, he believes. He plays to dribble, fix, create superiority. It’s a permanent spectacle. I love having such a player in my squad. »
The person concerned does not have much regard for this first goal after the match. “It’s nice, I’m happy. I didn’t ask myself any questions, I decided to pull hard and it went in. But the most important thing is that the team continues with this winning dynamic,” he quickly responded to the Prime Video microphone. His teammates ultimately looked happier than him, you could see it by the way they swarmed him on the field to celebrate. “All our attackers scored, they are happy and especially Ousmane, it will do him good,” appreciates Vitinha, who also slammed a beautiful lulu two minutes after his partner. “It’s good news for him but especially for all the positive vibes that it gives off around him,” adds Luis Enrique.
After weeks of having to repeat that scoring was not an end in itself for him, Dembélé has undoubtedly gained a little peace from this point of view, even if it should not remain an isolated case either, because a player of its level must ensure a minimum yield in this area. But decisive, he is, with his four assists and five penultimate passes before a goal. Nobody does better in Ligue 1.
Now all that remains is to export this pretty picture to the Champions League, because this is especially where PSG will need its lights. For the moment, like his team, the man who didn’t know whether he was right-handed or left-handed is a little behind on the European scene. See you in a little over two weeks, after the Dortmund match and the outcome of this group stage, to find out if Dembélé has really made everyone agree.