FT Top 5 Young Players With African Roots: Ousmane Dembele [Barcelona]

Dembele was born on 15 May 1997 in Vernon, Eure, Normandy to a Mauritanian-Senegalese mother and Malian father. He first played football when he was 12 at Evreux FC 27. He made his senior debut for French Ligue 1’s Rennes against Angers on 6 September 2015 and went on to score 12 goals in 26 appearances from the midfield. Rennes’ sporting director, Mikael Silvestre compared Dembele to Christiano Ronaldo whom he had seen arriving at Manchester United around at a similar age. One season later, on 12 May 2016, the Bundesliga giants, Borussia Dortmund announced that they had tied the 18-year-old to a five-year contract. Ousmane enjoyed a stellar debut season pulling the strings from the midfield and combining with the likes of the Gabonese, Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang, and Shinji Kagawa to lead Sebastian Tuchel’s men to a first major title in five years as they beat Eintracht Frankfurt to clinch the 2017 DFB Pokal. Dembele was named the man of the match in that final and made it into the Bundesliga team of the season, also winning the Bundesliga Rookie Award.

In a move perceived to be one in which Barcelona was replacing Neymar who left for PSG, the Catalans signed Dembele on 25 August 2017 for €105 million and reported €40 million add-ons becoming the joint second most expensive footballer in the world with French teammate, Paul Pogba- who was born to Guinean parents. Dembele had a slow start to life at Barcelona with season marked by injuries but is undoubtedly on course to become a football great. He is expected to combine with Kylian Mbappe at France to form a relatively young but talented French squad for the 2018 FIFA World Cup finals in Russia.