REIMS, France (Reuters) – Paris St Germain coach Luis Enrique has been cautious about tipping Ousmane Dembele as his team’s next top scorer, saying it could be detrimental to his side.
Dembele’s second-half strike in Saturday’s 1-1 draw at Reims helped PSG maintain their unbeaten run in Ligue 1 and put him in the spotlight as the leading striker to fill the void left by Kylian Mbappe’s move to Real Madrid.
However, while praising the 27-year-old winger, who has four goals and two assists this season, the coach urged the team as a whole to improve so as not to put too much pressure on just one player.
“We’re not looking for a goal scorer, because if you put the pressure on Dembele and then he doesn’t score the goals you want him to score, we’ll start with the problems,” the coach told a press conference on Saturday.
“What we want is for the team to win. Who scores? I don’t care. Let someone who wears the PSG shirt score. There is no pressure on one player only. The whole team has to keep improving,” he added.
PSG arrived in Reims on the back of a late victory over Spanish side Girona in the Champions League, but struggled to find their rhythm due to the absence of injured players such as striker Marcos Asensio and goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma.
“We knew from the start that it was going to be a very difficult game. They played very well, they’re physically very strong and they were good on the ball,” the coach added.
However, Enrique was confident that his side’s tactic of changing positions would give them an advantage in the coming games, as they host Stade Rennais on Friday before taking on Arsenal in the Champions League four days later.
“We will change players depending on what we see in the games. I have a lot of versatility in my squad to be able to use that and it’s an option we have on a regular basis with different players,” he said.
(Reporting by Angelica Medina in Mexico City; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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