How an 18-year-old Dembele stood out at Rennes in 2015/16

French side Rennes have long been known as a club full of talented young players, although in recent years the reputation of their academy had lost some of its lustre.

In the 2015/16 season 18-year-old Ousmane Dembele showed his real talent, and some of the biggest clubs in the world took a keen interest in the forward. After a hat-trick against Nantes, he scored in the match against Olympique Marseille, and in the following round he scored against Reims.

The young Frenchman’s style resembles that of Neymar at Barcelona. In the same campaign Dembele has scored 12 goals and provided 5 assists in 20 games. Another telling statistic is his dribbling: with an average of 4.5 successful dribbles per game, he had one of the highest rates in Ligue 1.

Ousmane Dembele was born in 1997. The attacker made his Ligue 1 debut in November and showed remarkable confidence and faith in his own qualities.

The forward said he always tried to please the fans but now had to focus on working for the team. What he had achieved so far was amazing, he added, but not enough to become a legendary player.

Dembele is comfortable on the ball when dribbling. He has good acceleration and real speed, and the Frenchman is often compared with the Brazilian Neymar.

“Give him space and he will punish you. The only way to stop Dembele is to give him no free space,” French analysts commented.

Former Manchester United defender Mikael Silvestre went further, saying the youngster could win the Ballon d’Or. Silvestre had seen Cristiano Ronaldo at the same age at Manchester United, and Ousmane’s characteristics reminded him of a young Ronaldo.

The youngster had made 2 appearances for the France U21 side and scored 4 goals in 8 games for France U17.

After the big win over Nantes (4-1), Rennes recorded two consecutive victories over Marseille and Reims, and the Red and Blacks sat 4th in the table. It was against Nantes that Ousmane Dembele scored his first hat-trick, showing off his skill and pace.

The young forward is also very intelligent. In an interview he explained that he should not do unnecessary things on the pitch and needed to be very effective, because every time he lost the ball the pressure fell on his teammates. He said he hoped to improve his performances in the near future. If he kept developing his game, the youngster looked capable of becoming one of the greatest players.

From Rennes to Dortmund and Barcelona

The interest from bigger clubs soon turned into a transfer. On 12 May 2016 Dembele signed a five-year contract with Borussia Dortmund, effective from 1 July 2016. His single season in Germany ended with a trophy: in the DFB-Pokal final at the Olympiastadion in Berlin on 27 May 2017 he scored the opening goal in a 2-1 win over Eintracht Frankfurt.

Barcelona moved for him that summer. The clubs agreed a fee of €105 million on 25 August 2017, with a further €40 million reported in add-ons, and Dembele signed a five-year contract three days later.

His senior international career had started even earlier. Dembele made his France debut on 1 September 2016 in Bari, coming on for the last 27 minutes of a 3-1 win over Italy. He was part of the France squad that won the 2018 FIFA World Cup, beating Croatia 4-2 in the final in Moscow, although he did not come off the bench in that match.

The Silvestre prediction

On 12 August 2023 Dembele joined Paris Saint-Germain for a fee of €50.4 million. In the 2024-25 season PSG won the Champions League for the first time, beating Inter 5-0 in the final on 31 May 2025. A few months later, in September 2025, Dembele won the Ballon d’Or, the award Mikael Silvestre had predicted for the teenager from Rennes.