Ousmane Dembele is enjoying his most productive season ever in front of goal, firing PSG to a fourth successive Ligue 1 title, a second consecutive Coupe de France and a UEFA Champions League final against Inter.
The Frenchman is in the running for football’s greatest individual honour, the Ballon d’Or, but the team comes first for the former Barcelona forward.
Ousmane Dembele could secure himself more than one piece of silverware when Paris Saint-Germain take on Inter Milan in the UEFA Champions League final on Saturday.
The Frenchman is currently the favourite to win the Ballon d’Or according to bookmakers, and those odds would surely only shorten should he deliver the Parisians their first-ever Champions League trophy.
It is a topic that Dembele, who has 33 goals and 11 assists in all competitions this season, is finding hard to avoid.
“Everyone keeps saying that to me,” Dembele told TNT Sports when Julien Laurens put it to him that “the Ballon d’Or means Ousmane Dembele.”
“But as I said, the first thing is to win the Champions League,” Dembele continued. “When you play for PSG, there are much more important things than individual awards.
“We must focus on winning this trophy and it’s all about the group. As I’ve been saying, we’ll be hungry and, hopefully, we’ll win this final.
“But it will be tough as this Inter team are a tough team to play against. I’ve watched them throughout the season because Marcus Thuram plays there. I also went to watch the derby there, and they’re a tough opponent.
“They’ve been playing together for four or five years. So it’ll be a tough match, but we believe.”
PSG were denied a maiden triumph in Europe’s premier competition by Bayern Munich in 2020, but they have an opportunity to right the wrongs of five years ago by claiming the same title in the Bavarians’ backyard.
It will be Dembele’s first Champions League final and the 28-year-old knows that a second is far from guaranteed.
“It’d be amazing [to win the Champions League],” said Dembele. “For a club like Paris Saint-Germain that wants to win this trophy for the first time, having this opportunity is amazing.
“This is why we have to play with smiles on our faces because we don’t know if we’ll experience this again in our careers. So it’s all about joy and we’ll do all we can to win this trophy.”
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