Luis Enrique cautious about anointing Dembele as Mbappe substitute


Paris-Saint Germain coach Luis Enrique is cautious about crowning Ousmane Dembele as Kylian Mbappe’s substitute, as a substitute preferring to keep away from heaping stress on him.

Dembele’s second-half strike maintained PSG’s unbeaten begin to the Ligue 1 season as they drew 1-1 at Reims on Saturday, taking him to 4 targets for the marketing campaign.

In simply 4 matches, Dembele has already bettered his tally from 26 league video games final time period (three), whereas his six aim involvements (4 targets, two assists) are a league-high determine.

Having misplaced Mbappe to Actual Madrid on a free switch forward of the marketing campaign, PSG want their remaining forwards to step up, however Luis Enrique says it can’t be as much as Dembele alone.

“We’re not on the lookout for a goalscorer, as a result of in case you put the stress on Dembele after which he doesn’t rating the targets you need him to attain, we’ll begin with the issues,” he stated.

“What we wish is for the group to win. Who scores? I don’t care. Let somebody who wears the PSG shirt rating.

“There is no such thing as a stress on one participant solely. The entire group has to maintain enhancing.”

PSG arrived in Reims on the again of a late victory over Girona within the Champions League, however struggled to seek out their rhythm with the likes of Marcos Asensio and Gianluigi Donnarumma out injured.

“We knew from the beginning that it was going to be a really troublesome recreation. They performed very nicely, they’re bodily very robust they usually had been good on the ball,” the PSG boss stated.

Subsequent up, PSG host Rennes on Friday earlier than going through Arsenal in a mammoth Champions League tie 4 days later – one in every of a number of powerful fixtures the French champions had been handed in final month’s draw.

“We’ll change gamers relying on what we see within the video games,” Luis Enrique stated of his plan for these video games.

“I’ve a whole lot of versatility in my squad to have the ability to use that and it’s an choice we’ve got regularly with totally different gamers.”



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