da bet7： The maddeningly frustrating winger could be dropped for Tuesday's clash with Poland, and he can have no complaints if he finds himself on the bench

da leao： In Leipzig on Friday, it was Aurelien Tchouameni's turn to defend Ousmane Dembele after another maddeningly ineffective display for France.

"Everything is fine, he is an exceptional player," the midfielder told reporters after the dour 0-0 draw with the Netherlands. "Ousmane is very important in our system. We know that this type of player achieves a lot of things and that he will perhaps miss things, it's normal."

That last part is undeniably true. Dembele has successfully normalised his wastefulness. Inefficiency is now an accepted part of his game.

Getty Dropped?

Why? Because the feeling somehow persists, despite all of the evidence to the contrary accumulated over the past seven years, that Dembele will belatedly come good.

However, the word coming out of the France camp ahead of Tuesday's crunch Euro 2024 clash with Poland is that Didier Deschamps is considering dropping Dembele for the game in Dortmund, where he first announced himself to the wider world as a thrilling teenage talent with the brightest of futures ahead of him.

That was eight years ago, though. Dembele's 27 now. He should be at his peak – and yet we're still waiting for him to realise his potential.

AdvertisementGetty'The boy is special'

Such patience is somewhat explicable. There are few more exciting sights in football than a nimble winger tearing a full-back to shreds. Dembele was blessed with that ability. Anyone who has watched him live will attest to the truly breathtaking turn of pace. Then, there's the "amazing" set of skills that Thomas Tuchel used to marvel at during their time together at Dortmund.

The great Andres Iniesta even said that Dembele had "genius" in his feet, while Martin Braithwaite couldn't believe what he was seeing after training with Dembele for the first time at Barcelona. "I have never seen someone with his talent. I'm serious!” the Dane told . "Leo Messi is something else but, after him, I haven't seen any player like Dembele. The boy is special."

It was a view shared by Messi himself. He labelled a teenage Dembele "a phenomenon on the field", quite clearly insinuating that his young team-mate wasn't quite as impressive off it. "It depends on him how good he becomes."

It proved a salient point.

Getty Images'Talent is not enough'

Dembele, by his own admission, "wasted" five years of his career at Barcelona, with a dreadfully unprofessional approach contributing to incessant injury issues and infuriating inconsistency.

"If you want to be a great player, you have to work; your talent is not enough," Dembele told in September 2022. "I didn't know it before, but now I see that it is essential to work on and off the field. The injuries came because, when I was younger, I didn't work as hard as I do now. It's clear that if you don't work, you can't enjoy football, you're not going to play much and you're going to get injured. Now, I'm stronger."

The penny, it seemed, had dropped. It looked as if French football's 'enfant terrible' had finally grown up. But while Dembele's injury record has unquestionably improved over the past two years, his efficacy has not.

GettyNot remotely reliable

Barcelona felt betrayed by Dembele last summer when he took advantage of a release clause in his contract to negotiate a move to Paris Saint-Germain. The Catalans had stuck by him through think and thin and club president Joan Laporta had always advocated "special treatment" for such a "genius". However, his faith in Dembele was always baffling, given the Frenchman has never proven himself remotely reliable. This is a contrary character that has always received more chances from clubs and coaches that he creates for colleagues.

During six years in Spain, he never managed more than eight league goals across an entire campaign, while he scored just three times in Ligue 1 last season. Rather tellingly, his only two goals during PSG's run to the semi-finals of the Champions League came against Barcelona – which only strengthened the suspicion that Dembele could be a world-class winger if only he wanted it enough.