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Indian Express
14-07-2025
- Sport
- Indian Express
Why Louis Enrique feels Ousmane Dembélé should win Ballon d'Or
Late for training; late to team bus; the last to respond to messages in the team group, and now late to blossom. Ousmane Dembélé was the wunderkind who always had lots of time on the ball, but never kept time in real life. The team's wizened senior pro, Gerard Pique once scolded him: 'You must learn football is a 24-hour game.' El Mundo Deportivo carried a cartoon where one Barcelona fan is telling the other: 'We don't mind him being late if his goals arrive on time.' Some teammates said he was disengaged, aloof, bunking parties to play video games, and he fished out the oldest and lamest excuses for turning up late for practice. Dead phone; stomach ache, tooth pain. His national coach Didier Deschamps would painstakingly say: 'He has to understand that he has to change; the sooner he realises that, the better for him and his club.' Injuries, doubts, loss of form. Hefty price-tags attract little sympathy. The second most expensive player in the world when he was barely 21, he seemed another misadventure of Barcelona in the transfer market. But Xavi swore about his gifts when someone questioned his ethics. 'He is different. Special,' he raved. The club's president Joan Laporta, even on the cusp of Dembélé 's tearless departure to PSG, emphasised that he was better than Kylian Mbappe. Those that watched Dembélé at his best nodded their heads in approval. It was not difficult to see why. He is as quick with the ball as he is without it; he dribbles, not as a tool to showboat but when the situation demands the trickery; he is a blur of sidesteps, and ghosts through congested lanes of human bodies; his left foot is as good as the right; he can slot it either wings, can lead the line as both a false and conventional nine; he is strong through the air, the frame of a boxer with the suppleness of a gymnast. He was one player in many, yet it remained a mystery why his genius had to wait until he was 28 to fully blossom. Rare flashes of bewildering genius apart, he was one of those footballers who never really comprehended his own genius. At PSG, it was widely thought that he would slow-fade into anonymity. Except that he scripted a most remarkable comeback tally. He was PSG's hero in the league, talisman in Champions League, and identity in the Club World Cup. The defeat in the final should not take the sheen away from his glorious season. Luis Enrique, his manager, hails him as the best player in the world, a runaway Ballon'd Or. PSG's president Nasser al-Khelaifi quipped that, 'If he doesn't win the Ballon d'Or, that's the Ballon d'Or's problem.' The numbers concur with the manager and the president. A ledger of 38 goals, 16 assists and three trophies could be enough to make him the favourite. But he was more than a creator this season. He was an inspiration and leader too. 'Ousmane is a leader, but in what he does, not with words. Have you seen how he pressed? asked Enrique to a bunch of journalists after he had masterminded the demolition of Real Madrid. 'I would give the Ballon d'Or to Mr Ousmane Dembélé, for how he pressed,' he would say. Aggressive pressing is the most noticeable change in him, and one that really defines his turnaround. He could be strolling serenely, his long, slender legs swanning along the grass blades, before those whirs into action like a chopper, acquiring a sudden explosive velocity. He presses vigorously, arms spread out, eyes a ball of fire and focus and legs ready to pounce on the ball. In the Champions League final against Inter Milan, he instigated more pressing action than all of his teammates in the final third (14, and the next best was 4. 'It's not just the goals or the decisive passes, it's his overall impact that makes the team win trophies. He has shown he is a step above. He is our best player, someone who can make the difference, because he has convictions,' Enrique showered praises. When the highest line of offence presses as aggressively, closing down the opponents' goalkeeper and defenders, the teammates follow. The whole team is making ground behind him and the opponents are suffocated, resulting in panic long-range passes. After the Champions League final, Inter Milan's goalkeeper Yann Sommer confessed: 'We had difficulties to build up,' said the Inter goalkeeper, 'but we have to say they [had] good pressure.' The turning point of Dembélé this season was, ironically, when he was dropped before PSG's group game against Arsenal, as 'he didn't meet the club's obligation'. Later, Enrique said it was the best decision he ever made at the club. 'I had to make a hard decision but I thought it was the best for the team,' he said. The next morning, the player had a long meeting with Enrique and was reinstalled in the playing eleven for the next match. Dembélé returned wanting to prove a point, which he had been doing all along the season. The role of Enrique in the revival of Enrique cannot be underplayed. 'He changed everything,' Dembélé once said. He was not referring to strategy or positioning but the shift in mentality. 'He has always been a phenomenon. The thing is, you have to go deeper to get the best version of Ousmane,' the manager replied. So much so that the transformation of Dembélé from a glittering talent to the best player of the season gone by, embodies the journey of a PSG from careless big-spenders to a genuine world-beating force. Late to blossom. But his time has finally come.
Irish Times
05-05-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
How a Manchester United player changed the Republic of Ireland team forever
'The poor old [Duke of Wellington] what shall I say of him?' Daniel O'Connell once asked providing his own answer: 'To be sure he was born in Ireland, but being born in a stable does not make a man a horse.' The Liberator's words highlight that the link between birthplace and nationality in Ireland has long been influenced by both occupation and large-scale emigration . After all, many anthems speak of national liberation, but few give credit to heroes born abroad as Amhrán na bhFiann does. Sixty years ago on Monday, at Dalymount Park in Dublin, Irish international football changed irrevocably. Few people watching the 1-0 victory over Spain on May 5th, 1965, could have known that Manchester-born Shay Brennan, who was among the green shirts for the first time that day, was to be the forerunner to more than 100 other international footballers born 'beyond the wave'. The previous year, Fifa had overhauled the regulations concerning national teams' representation. Out went residence, in came citizenship. As the proposal read to the 1964 Fifa conference in Tokyo noted: 'A player who is a citizen of a country by virtue of his birth or by the nationality of his father ... is qualified to play in international or representative teams for that country.' Just as importantly, footballers couldn't switch nations once they turned 18. READ MORE While Northern Ireland's Harry Cavan spoke in Tokyo, the FAI 's delegate – if present – was silent on the change, for all its subsequent importance. The news also failed to make any Irish newspaper pages. In Spain, now no longer able to cap three-time nation-hoppers such as Alfredo Di Stefano or László Kubala, things were different. However, as Andres Merce Varela of Barcelona's El Mundo Deportivo admitted, reform was needed, because switching countries had 'detracted from the idea of football between nations ...'. Questions remain as to why the FAI had not previously sought players born abroad, given that the IRFU had long picked 'Anglos' and most Irish footballers played in Britain. Unofficially, there had been such players: Mick O'Brien, a journeyman born in Durham made four appearances for the Irish Free State between 1927 and 1932. One reason for the reluctance, perhaps, was a desire to avoid treading on the toes of the Football Association by taking 'their' players. Manchester United's Shay Brennan taps the ball into Nottingham Forest's net as George Best looks on. Photograph: MSI/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images Immediately after Tokyo, the FAI remained reluctant to search the English football league for Irish names. James Quinn claims in No Foreign Game that they ignored Matt Busby's initial tip-off about Brennan, because of what he believes was embarrassment at acknowledging Britain's hidden Irish community. Ultimately, FAI secretary Joe Wickham passed Brennan's name to the selectors, but not before tentatively contacting the FA to see whether he was likely to be called up by Alf Ramsey. Slow progress continued. Fifa removed the discriminatory 'paternal' clause, and, in 1979, Londoner Chris Hughton became Ireland's first mixed-race player, qualifying to play for the country through his mother. This milestone was achieved before colonialist countries such as Spain or Belgium, while Hughton's debut coincided with the first time a majority of a Republic of Ireland starting XI was foreign-born. As the 1980s arrived, Irish citizenship law allowed a shift to not just grandparents but great-grandparents. Michael Robinson, who proved the lack of Irish birth or close generational ties did not hamper commitment, told Marca in 2012: 'When I played with Ireland, I felt something more powerful than when I played with Liverpool. I felt that I was defending an important nation.' Mind you, weeks before his debut in Paris in October 1980, he had responded to the question in Match Weekly 'Who would you like to meet most?' with '[England manager] Ron Greenwood on business.' And here lay a major problem with the 'granny rule': footballers were often accused of choosing Ireland more from their head than their heart. It seemed to confuse some onlookers that the likes of Andy Townsend, for example, could cheer for both Ireland and England. That simplistic view missed the point that being of mixed heritage meant that split loyalties were entirely natural, and not an issue for the player involved at all. It is very easy to cheer for more than one country if you have roots in more than one country. Andy Townsend leading by example while serving as captain of the Republic of Ireland against the Netherlands at the 1994 World Cup. Photograph: Shaun Botterill/ALLSPORT Some people insisted that any true exile of Erin would follow Tony Grealish, Eamon Dolan and Kevin Kilbane and take an Irish youth game over a full English cap any day. But if the default setting was to climb over the dead at the call to play for England, then consider the lengthy unseemly persuasion it took for Jack Grealish and Declan Rice to jump ship. Qualification for Euro 88 brought the granny rule into the crosshairs of the English press. After Ireland beat England at that tournament, the Daily Mail's Jeff Powell led the charge, raging that England had lost to 'a bunch of international mercenaries recruited from their own First Division'. Many in the English media sought to undermine the Irish team's authenticity, and shoneen Irish journalists willingly joined in. But ultimately the foreign-born footballers brought a belated recognition of the diaspora in Ireland. Most Irish football fans are now aware that a significant number of their travelling companions are also foreign-born with foreign accents. Perhaps the most significant feature of the granny rule is how other countries now use it, often with the same angst about commitment and damage to the local game. Albania has emerged recently as a more aggressive pursuer of qualified players than the FAI ever were. For Euro 2024, 69.23 per cent of its panel was foreign born, beating the 65 per cent of the Irish squad in 1988, although still below the 72.73 per cent for Italia 90. [ Giants in Green: Michael Walker's greatest all-time all-Ireland XI Opens in new window ] October 1975 was the last time a solely home-born Republic of Ireland men's team began a match – until 2020. A quarter of a century of little emigration has lessened the reliance on the granny rule, which has been so crucial to the story of Irish football. Conversely, immigration has brought the prospect of Ireland losing more players through ancestry to others. Indeed, the recent tussle with Albania over Kevin Zefi shows that we now have an Irish-born generation, coming of age, that may play for another 'land beyond the wave'.
