Ousmane Dembélé: Made in the Bundesliga | OneFootball

Ousmane Dembélé: the France World Cup winner made in the Bundesliga

Having already won a FIFA World Cup, red-hot Ousmane Dembélé could add a UEFA Champions League to his trophy cabinet this month. It's a feat made possible by the France winger's career-shaping stint at Borussia Dortmund...

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When Henrikh Mkhitaryan departed for Manchester United in the summer of 2016, Dortmund were left with some pretty big boots to fill. The Armenian had produced 41 goals and 49 appearances across 140 appearances for BVB, helping the club to a couple of Bundesliga and DFB Cup runners-up finishes, and two Supercup wins.

Dortmund reinvested some of the Mkhitaryan pot by bringing in proven Bundesliga names such as Mario Götze, Andre Schürrle and Sebastian Rode. The five-time Bundesliga winners also snapped up a handful of lesser-known players, including UEFA Euro 2016 winner Raphaël Guerreiro, Barcelona-reared Marc Bartra, Turkish prospect Emre Mor and 18-year-old Dembélé.

Dembele - Ligue 1's Young Player of the Year for 2016 - had been linked with a host of top European clubs, and said himself he rejected interest from then English Premier League champions Leicester City. From Dortmund's perspective, it would prove to be one of their shrewdest transfers in history.

Ousmane Dembele (c.) made 50 competitive appearances for Borussia Dortmund. (2016 Getty Images)

With six goals and 12 assists in 32 outings, Dembélé was involved in a Dortmund goal every 113 minutes he was on the field in the Bundesliga. It took him only three minutes longer than that to land his first provision in German football, while his maiden Bundesliga goal arrived as early as Matchday 4, against Wolfsburg. He also turned in five goal-and-assist performances in all competitions.

Scenes of Dembélé and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang wheeling away in celebration started to multiply as the Dortmund pair combined time and again, the latter benefiting substantially from his incendiary decoy to win the 2016/17 top scorer's prize ahead of Robert Lewandowski. BVB finished the season in third in the Bundesliga and exited the UEFA Champions League at the quarter-final stage, but won the DFB Cup.

Dembélé marked the occasion with the opening goal against Eintracht Frankfurt - his 10th and final strike in Dortmund colours. He donned the famous black and yellow one last time in the 2017 Supercup defeat to Bayern Munich, before Barcelona made their move. For a short while, the deal ranked as the second most expensive transfer of all time.

"Dembélé's talent was innate. Very, very unusual. We had a lot of top players on the team, but Ousmane was one of the craziest talents I saw," Thomas Tuchel - who handed Dembélé his Bundesliga debut - recalled in an interview with Goal. "He's an incredible player, really talented. It was only a year, but I could have watched his amazing skills all day."

A one-season wonder of a different kind, Dembélé went on to play 186 times for Barcelona, registering 40 goals and 41 assists. He made four appearances for France during their triumphant 2018 World Cup campaign - having debuted for his country under Didier Deschamps a couple of months into his Dortmund stay - and has started six of seven games as France lost to Argentina on penalties in the 2022 final.

It is this campaign, though, where Dembélé has hit new heights. At the end of the 2022/23 term, he sought pastures new back in his homeland with Paris Saint-Germain, and he hasn't looked back. Struggling for consistency towards the end of his time in Spain, the now-27-year-old amassed six goals and 16 assists in all competitions before bursting into life this time around.

As PSG go for the first treble in the club's history, Dembélé has been in incredible form, scoring a huge 32 goals and providing 13 assists. Eight of those strikes have come in the Champions League, where he and his teammates will face Inter Milan in the final. It is fair to say he has come a long way since his time at Signal Iduna Park, but that stint put him in good stead for his future exploits.

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