Ahead of Paris Saint-Germain’s first trip abroad of what would be a marathon, globe-trotting season, Ousmane Dembele was told to stay at home.
The instruction came as a shock, the explanation from the coach who had dropped him sounded a little opaque. “If an individual doesn’t comply with the team’s needs, it means they are not ready to play,” said Luis Enrique.
There was some comfort. “The situation,” he added, “is not irreversible and I’m not going to make a drama out of it.”
But a drama, Luis Enrique knew, would inevitably ensue, at least within parts of the broader PSG entourage and especially in some branches of the media who follow the club.
Not least because the game Dembele had been excluded from - after a disagreement with his coach the previous weekend and a reported late arrival to training - was at Arsenal in the Uefa Champions League, and PSG lost it 2-0.
There were two ways the relationship between coach and player, between player and club, between Dembele and PSG supporters, might have gone from here.
There might have been a season ahead like one of those that characterised the timeline of the younger Dembele, the beguilingly skillful winger who had commanded a fee in excess of €100 million to join Barcelona at the age of 20 footballer but who, by the age of 24 had appeared in well under half the club’s matches.
At Barca, he was often injured, and, rightly or wrongly, scrutiny in that phase of his career used to focus on his time-keeping, his self-discipline. When he did play he could be dazzling, but he was very often exasperating, his finishing erratic.
He might, having been dropped by Luis Enrique for PSG’s first taxing game outside France in the 2024-25, have played out a similar role to those he assumed in his early Barcelona years, of a shy young man overshadowed by a famous predecessor.
When Dembele joined Barca in 2017, he did so under the huge pressure of both that weighty transfer fee and with the obligation of fitting into a team Neymar had just left. The burden of succession then seemed too heavy.
There were hefty new responsibilities back in September, too. PSG and Luis Enrique were still working out a formula for success for their post-Kylian Mbappe era.
Mbappe had departed from Paris after seven years making himself the go-to striker, the figurehead of the club. In his absence, Dembele, a fellow France international, was designated as the man to lead the PSG attack. Following Mbappe, like replacing Neymar at Camp Nou, meant big boots to fill.
The other route out of what Luis Enrique had described as “a difficult decision”, excluding Dembele for the visit to Arsenal, was the upward one.
Happily, that has been Dembele's trajectory, one that might very well reach a stunning peak on Sunday on the edge of New York City when PSG meet Chelsea in the final of the new, enlarged Club World Cup. They do so as firm favourites to complete a clean sweep of trophies this season.
On that journey, Dembele has been the lodestar, the attacking guide and leading scorer through a campaign of unprecedented success for the club. Should PSG add the title of world club champions to those of European and French champions, it would be very hard to look beyond Dembele as outstanding candidate to collect this year’s Ballon d’Or.
On Wednesday against Real Madrid he struck his 35th goal of the club season and provided his 16th assist.
That’s in 52 appearances, several of them statement games like the 4-0 rout of Madrid in the Club World Cup semi-final, where Dembele had hassled Madrid’s Raul Asencio into one panicky mistake and Antonio Rudiger into another to put PSG 2-0 up within the opening 10 minutes.
Symptoms there of how the quick, alert Dembele alarms the most gnarled - Rudiger - and the most bumptious - Asencio - of elite defenders.
He’s cultivated that aura through an astonishing 2025 and several high-class contests. Dembele was key to PSG’s statement victories against Manchester City, Liverpool and Aston Villa on the road to their Uefa Champions League victory.
In the Champions League semi-final against Arsenal, it was Dembele’s finish in London that swung the tie in PSG’s favour, his goal the climax of a 26-pass PSG move in which his movement, dropping deep from the middle of the forward line, darting upfield to stretch the opposition, was a crucial dynamic.
Here, at Arsenal, where he had been left out at the beginning of the season with Luis Enrique pointedly referring to “a problem with the player’s responsibility to the team”, was Dembele at the heart and centre of a wonderful team goal.
Two assists in the record-breaking 5-0 demolition of Inter Milan in the Champions League final would follow and although Dembele, nursing minor injuries, missed out on the group stage at the Club World Cup, he has been vital in the business end of the tournament.
He was on the scoresheet against Bayern Munich in the quarter-final, silencing Madrid with the semi barely kicked-off.
“His team-mates look for him, and they find him,” noted Luis Enrique, describing how Dembele has grown into his leading role since their falling out in September, “and he’s at a very high level of performance, so that’s perfect for everyone.”
He has developed into a more rounded, all-purpose footballer, too. “We all knew Ousmane as a winger,” Luis Enrique said. “Now you see he can start out wide or more centrally. That’s a positive thing. His ability to move inside the box has been surprising — something more typical of a centre-forward.”
Plenty, then, for Chelsea to ponder, and, having analysed the nervousness of Madrid, and the helplessness of Inter in PSG’s last big final, to fear.
“We’re a dominant team most of the time,” purred Luis Enrique after the rout of Real, “and that makes things hard for our opponents. It’s up to the players now to capitalise on that and keep on making this a great season.”
