The tale of Ousmane Dembele and a coveted watch, first spotted on the wrist of a close friend, says plenty about the steeliness that sits beneath his quiet, occasionally uneasy public image.
Dembele — “Dembouz” to those in his inner circle — has a passion for rare timepieces. When one particular watch caught his eye, he made his friend a sizeable offer. The friend hesitated. So Dembele proposed a challenge instead: if he scored 30 goals for Paris Saint-Germain the following season, perhaps the two of them could strike a deal.
People close to the 29-year-old say the target soon became a fixation. Inside the PSG dressing room, every goal brought a running countdown — “ten more to go, five more, four more…” — until he had passed the mark he had set himself long before the campaign was over. Even then, Dembele told his friend he would wait until the night of the 2025 Champions League final against Inter Milan.
That same fierce drive has not always been easy to detect at this World Cup. Despite scoring five times, including a hat-trick against Norway and a breathtaking finish against Morocco in the quarter-final, Dembele has appeared faintly frustrated by the way his performances have been judged in the media.
Ousmane Dembele is one of France’s most dangerous weapons at the World Cup this summer
The PSG star has an obsession with winning and a great relationship with Didier Deschamps
Asked by reporters about his group-stage hat-trick against Norway, he looked down at the floor in a manner reminiscent of Marcelo Bielsa and refused to make much of it. In the impatient climate of modern football, some have focused on his comparatively modest scoring record for France — his strike against Iraq was his first for the country at a major tournament — even after a season in which certain observers felt he had not quite touched the heights of 2025. The criticism appears to have landed.
Those who understand Dembele best insist his low-key public manner tells only half the story. This is, after all, a player who resisted friends’ advice to prepare acceptance remarks in advance of the 2025 Ballon d’Or ceremony, which he went on to win. Behind the closed doors of a dressing room, they say, he can be a whirlwind. “From the outside, because he is quiet and discreet, people can sometimes form a different impression of his personality,” one source said.
On the face of it, playing alongside Kylian Mbappe, as Dembele will in Tuesday’s World Cup semi-final against Spain in this city, may not be quite the blessing it seems.
He has discovered his preferred milieu as a centre forward at PSG, where Luis Enrique gives him a lot of freedom to roam from that berth. But Didier Deschamps has spent the last month trying to establish where Dembele might best fit in around Mbappe. He started as a 10, behind the captain, in the win over Senegal, but was then moved wide at half-time in that game to give Michael Olise the central role and has generally stayed out there. In the Senegal game debriefings, he was asked to stick to the flank more than he had – which he has.
It helps that he is the most versatile of France’s four attacking players, but those close to him suggest that the detailed coaching work he has done with Enrique in Paris is also paying a dividend.
Dembele credits Enrique with helping his ‘reading of situations and his understanding of how his movement affects the rest of the team,’ says one source. ‘One of the areas in which he has developed significantly is his understanding of movement and tactics: identifying which spaces to occupy, when to appear in certain areas and which movements can create opportunities for his teammates.’
He and Mbappe understand each other’s movements from a season together at PSG. This is also their third World Cup. The bonds of this side go deeper, given the strong PSG contingent.
Dembele, Bradley Barcola, Desire Doue and Dayot Upamecano all work together under Enrique and share the same agent. Upamecano and Dembele have been friends since childhood, having grown up in the town of La Madeleine in Evreux, Normandy.
Mutual intuition is one thing, but we have reached the stage of this tournament when it is probably going to take a moment of genius to crack the tight, technically excellent Spanish defence, which finally conceded to Belgium on Friday. Dembele’s goal against Morocco – threaded through the tightest of channels – delighted a French nation anxious about an unhealthy Mbappe dependency. ‘Ousmane is the one among the rest most likely to deliver that special thing,’ said a source who knows Deschamps’ side well. ‘That goal against Morocco showed France have not one but two of the world’s best finishers. Ousmane brings this calmness, as well.’
The semi-final here brings Dembele and Lamine Yamal, who have competed together for the Ballon d’Or and were both at Barcelona for a time, up against each other again on the highest stage.
Yamal was not holding back on Friday, when asked about the challenge. ‘We beat France in our last two matches,’ he said of Spain’s 2024 Euros semi-final win and the epic 5-4 win in the Nations League semi. ‘If France should be afraid of anyone, it’s us. We’re the ones who knocked them out last time.’ This wasn’t exactly Dembele’s style.
If anything, Yamal’s contribution has come under the greater scrutiny, with just one goal here for him. ‘I think everyone is obsessed with goals, and we won the European Championship with just one goal from me,’ he said. ‘If we win the World Cup, I don’t think anyone will remember how many goals I scored or missed.’
France showed why are World Cup favourites with a dominant 2-0 win over Morocco
France have Mbappe fit, despite a minor ankle injury sustained against Morocco. Midfielder Aurelien Tchouameni, the vice-captain, is also expected to return after an adductor muscle injury and if fully fit, is likely to replace Manu Kone, despite the Roma player’s good performances.
Sources suggest that Dembele now considers himself to be ‘on a mission’ here. Even more hell-bent on winning a second World Cup, to go with the 2018 edition, than he was on taking a second Champions League trophy with PSG. A final against Argentina would bring the chance to avenge the breathtaking defeat in the 2022 final, though the prospect is not apparently being viewed that way in the camp.
When Dembele was up against Yamal in the 2025 Ballon d’Or, his friends urged him to increase his social media presence to project himself in the same way the Spanish prodigy was. ‘That’s not me. If I’m going to win the Ballon d’Or, I’ll do it just the way I am,‘ he told them. The low profile will be harder to sustain should he help France take a last, giant stride to glory, at the weekend.
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