“I have to ask you about a sentence that haunts you: Dembélé plays like an autistic”. This is the last question of a long interview carried out by Sport With Jorge Sampaoli, former OM coach, from Argentine selection and more recently, in a very ephemeral way, from Stade Rennais. During Euro 2024, as a consultant, Sampaoli had thus qualified the style of Dembélé, in an interview with So football. “He plays like an autistic. It begins the action and ends it on its own. He does not have the ability to make a teammate shine, he just knows how to be shined by himself ”he said in particular.
Except that since then, Ousmane Dembélé has transformed into a scoring machine with PSG, to everyone's surprise. Which requires Sampaoli a little to temper his opinion at the time. “I was very bad to express myself. I am very emotional and passionate, and all I wanted to say is that Dembélé is not a player who combines. He looks at his opponents and the goal much more than his teammates. For me, it is one of the best in the world, but in a context like that of Barça, where the combinations are necessary, it isolates itself and is not as efficient. He plays his game, he does it very well, but I give a lot of importance to combination football ”said Sampaoli.
