Ousmane Dembélé

The 2025 Ballon d’Or holder arrives in North America as the only French outfielder besides Mbappé who is genuinely undroppable. Dembélé’s metamorphosis from injury-prone Barcelona winger to the spearhead of PSG’s treble-winning press is one of the great late-twenties transformations of the decade, and Deschamps has spent the last two years figuring out how to fit two strikers’ worth of star power into one front three.

The likely solution at the tournament is Dembélé operating as a hybrid right-winger and inside-forward, drifting into the half-space when Mbappé attacks the left channel. He has never carried a tournament himself — eight goals in 56 caps is light for a player of his profile — but France don’t need him to. They need him to be the late-cut-inside, left-foot-shot, vertical-runner that broke Inter and Liverpool last spring. At 28 and finally healthy, this is the moment.

Strengths

• Two-footed dribbling — equally dangerous off either flank
• Tight-space combination play in the final third
• Off-ball running into the channels as a false nine

Recent form

Reigning Ballon d'Or holder; PSG treble winner in 2024-25 and still the engine of Luis Enrique's pressing front three.

Inherits the No. 7 shirt that Griezmann wore for eight years — the first French player to wear it at a major tournament since 2017.