PROFILE | PSG’s Warren Zaire-Emery gets back on track | OneFootball

It’s easy to forget that Warren Zaïre-Emery, now on his fourth campaign as part of Paris Saint-Germain’s senior squad, is still only 19 years old. His reinvention and resurgence at the tail end of 2025, though, have been proof of a maturity beyond his years.

While a seasoned regular by now, Zaïre-Emery remains the standard-bearer for the new generation of PSG academy graduates. Senny Mayulu, Quentin Ndjantou, and Ibrahim Mbaye, all around the same age as the French international, have joined him in the first team this season amid the club’s renewed focus on homegrown players.

His role in last season’s Champions League victory was minimal, though, having totalled around half an hour of time on the pitch from the quarter-finals onwards. The midfield trio of Vitinha, João Neves, and Fabián Ruiz had consolidated by the turn of the year, effectively shutting Zaïre-Emery out of involvement in the major fixtures.

The club’s leading academy product was low on confidence, and his performances bereft of the impact and spark that saw him break through under Christophe Galtier in 2022. After the ankle sprain he suffered in February, which further dented his momentum,  the midfielder would start another eight league games before the end of a lukewarm individual campaign.

Evidently, the mental drive he showed to bounce back from that spell will serve him well over the rest of his career. “I focused on myself again, I kept on working hard, and now that things are going better, I’m still doing that,” he explained in October. Now back in the senior national team after a year-long spell with the U21s, the midfielder appears to have emerged from his middling spell with a renewed drive. 

Zaire-Emery: An able deputy at right-back for PSG… and for France, too?

Zaïre-Emery has notably deputised for the injured Achraf Hakimi impressively, looking increasingly at ease in a right-back role. His defensive positioning still needs some fine-tuning, but few wingers have beaten the deceptively physical and tenacious defender in one-on-one battles.

The teenager’s attacking contributions are unlikely to ever match those of the Moroccan, whose command of the right wing is responsible for one of PSG’s main attacking outlets. Zaïre-Emery, though, is a more than serviceable crosser and is adept at creating space with line-breaking bursts forward.  

It would be misleading to call the Frenchman a makeshift full-back at this point, considering he has been dropping into the position for over two years now. In any case, it has increasingly looked like a role the 19-year-old could settle into over the long-term. In the short term, it could even be his ticket to the World Cup.

GFFN | Raphael Jucobin