The Ousmane Dembele show: The art of minimalism and scoring goals

He reduced the match to an Ousmane Friday Evening Show.

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You don’t need slow-motion replays to admire Dembele, because everything unfolds unhurriedly. He gets the ball, he waits, steps forward, strides back, veers left, drifts right, as though running an elaborate hypnotic sequence to tranquilise the men around him. Then, without any burst of explosive speed or wicked contortion of his body, he swings his foot, as sweet as a strike can be. The wind-up negligible, the follow-through austere. A firm snap of malleable ankles. The ball goes where he wants it, without him breaking a sweat, or the ball getting dirty.

All three goals were built on the same principle: unreal minimalism, sparkling clarity. The first: a diagonal ball from Mbappe, a bob past Fredrik André Bjørkan, a pause, a survey of the field, and the ball serenaded past Egil Selvik. In flight it seemed devoid of venom. Selvik’s hands were too late. The whole sequence took four seconds. Dembele has the ability to stretch time, to make four seconds feel like forty. He is the antithesis of Mbappe, whose supersonic movements are better appreciated in slow motion.

France’s Ousmane Dembele, right, celebrates with Kylian Mbappe, center, and other teammates after scoring his side’s third goal during the World Cup Group I soccer match between Norway and France in Foxborough, Mass., near Boston, Friday, June 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

The second was roguish. Cutting inside from the right, he rolled the ball sideways, stopped, stood on it, rinsed and repeated, until he found the angle to curve it into the net. The third was the simplest of all: he received, he steadied, he struck. Norway, playing without Haaland for much of the evening, could have made it tighter had they converted a penalty in the second half. But there was nothing of ifs and buts in Dembele’s evening.

The celebration was brief and mild throughout. “I’m like that, I don’t celebrate too much, I don’t express anger too much. I was brought up that way,” he told L’Equipe once.

He was raised by his mother alone in La Madeleine, a suburb of Évreux. His grandmother had fled Mauritania, married a man from Mali and settled in Vernon on the banks of the Seine. His mother brought up her children alone after her husband left. “Football was an escape for me. I used to play it from noon to night. Otherwise, you will get dragged into all sorts of activities there,” he said in a documentary.

The journey from La Madeleine to Dortmund was swift. By 18 he was at the factory of rough diamonds. The notoriety was building too. Late for practice. Reluctant to sit on the bench. Not given to glamour or extravagance, just detached. “I just wanted to go home and be that kid again.” The year he turned 20, Barcelona paid 145 million euros and got injuries and absence for much of it. His career had nearly been written off before Luis Enrique revived him at PSG. In his second year there, he was a Champions League winner and a Ballon d’Or.

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“It’s the coach,” Dembele would say. Enrique would react: “You have to go deeper to get the best version of Ousmane.” Didier Deschamps, who once famously snubbed him for arriving late, was not on the touchline on Friday. He had flown back to France to attend his mother’s funeral, with assistant Guy Stéphan taking charge. The team did not look like a team without its manager.

Dembele, back out wide as Mbappe’s wingman, left defenders in his vapour trail. Three goals, 32 minutes. The most frictionless hat-trick in a World Cup. Anywhere. The Ballon d’Or stays where it is.