Ousmane Dembele has done what few in the modern game dare to do: he has stood in front of the firing squad and told the mob to put their guns down. Th...
Ousmane Dembele has done what few in the modern game dare to do: he has stood in front of the firing squad and told the mob to put their guns down. The Paris Saint. Germain winger, speaking exclusively to GoalZaza, launched a staunch defence of his France captain Kylian Mbappe, insisting the torrent of criticism aimed at the Real Madrid forward has gone too far. He is right. And wrong. And that is precisely what makes this row so fascinating.Let us be honest with ourselves. Mbappe has not been the transcendent, world eating force we have grown accustomed to seeing. There have been games at the Santiago Bernabeu where his movement has been static, his decision making rushed, his finishing uncharacteristically wayward. The machine has glitched. Critics have pointed to a perceived lack of tactical flexibility, an inability to operate as a pure nine in a low block, a reliance on transitional space that La Liga defences now choke off. The narrative has shifted from heir to the throne to spoiled aristocrat. It is a brutal market, but that is the price of the crown.Yet Dembele's plea carries weight because he sees the man behind the mask. He shares a dressing room, a national team drill, a bond forged in the heat of international competition. He knows that the weight of an entire nation, a club the size of Real Madrid, and a contract that rewrote football economics sits on Mbappe's shoulders every single minute of every single match. To suggest the boy is not trying, that he has checked out, that he is a problem, is to ignore the glaring truth: he is still producing moments of clinical brilliance. He is still the player every defence in Europe fears in a foot race. He is still Kylian Mbappe.What Dembele is really pushing back against is the modern disease of binary judgment. In football today, a player is either a god or a fraud. There is no middle ground, no allowance for a dip in form, no patience for adaptation. Mbappe has moved from the system built entirely around him at PSG to a more complex ecosystem at Madrid where Vinicius Junior and Jude Bellingham also demand the ball. That is not a failure of talent. It is a process of recalibration. And processes take time.So yes, Dembele has a point. The noise has become hysterical. But here is the rub: Mbappe, more than anyone, knows that the only way to silence the noise is to shut mouths with goals. Talk is cheap. Defences are not. The critics will only go quiet when he is smashing the ball into the top corner in a Champions League final. Until then, the scrutiny remains. And frankly, that is the gig he signed up for. Dembele has thrown a protective arm around his captain. Now Mbappe must repay that faith by doing what he does best: reminding the world why he is the most devastating footballer of his generation.
