Will Dembélé and Doué's injuries have consequences for the French team's upcoming training sessions?

Two somber faces rush into the French national team's bus parked in a gloomy parking lot in Wroclaw, Poland, barely contained anger a thousand kilometers away. Désiré Doué's calf injuries, and especially Ousmane Dembélé's thigh injuries, have caused significant tension between PSG and the French team, the day after the 2-0 victory over Ukraine.

On Saturday morning, the duo left Clairefontaine with several weeks' absence in their luggage and the prospect of missing the first Champions League matches. This medical assessment only exacerbated the feelings of the previous day and fueled heated debates between the European champion club and the staff of the world runners-up.

After spending the night - the delegation returned at 4 a.m. - with their teammates at Clairefontaine, Doué and Dembélé left the gathering at noon on Saturday, after undergoing tests with the French team doctor Frank Le Gall. The former, affected by a "soleus of the right calf" , will miss between three and four weeks and is therefore out of the reception of Atalanta Bergamo in the Champions League (September 17) but also for the trip to Marseille in L1 (September 21).

The second, victim of a "torn right hamstring" , will be out for between six and eight weeks and will therefore even miss the trip to Barcelona in C1 (October 1). Two hard blows for PSG. Even if the professional group will not resume training until Wednesday at 5 p.m., Doué and Dembélé will have to go to the Poissy Campus in order to move forward with their treatment schedule.

The capital club will now exert pressure to prevent its two players from being called up for international duty in October. This seems highly compromised by the timing for Dembélé, less so for Doué. This is the issue of PSG's influence in the coming weeks in its discussions with the FFF. For Désiré Doué, the final diagnosis was more serious than expected during the night of Friday to Saturday. "It's a knock," the national team staff said. But the images of the former Rennes player limping as he left the stadium did not bode well and raised fears of an injury, which was confirmed Saturday morning.

Ousmane Dembélé's closed face as he boarded the bus reflected his frustration. The Parisian didn't look like he was laughing. On Saturday lunchtime, when he returned home, what state was "Dembouz" in? The French team's entourage insisted that the player did not regret his decision to play. "We didn't ask him on Monday if he wanted to stay, nor if he wanted to play on Friday ," a member of his entourage added. "Basically, he wasn't supposed to play more than twenty minutes."

Although the cases vary, one thing stands out from this September gathering: the fourth (Fabian Ruiz, muscle discomfort), fifth (Désiré Doué), and seventh most-used (Ousmane Dembélé) outfield players at PSG at the start of the season have been injured in recent days. Could the medical staff have anticipated this muscle fatigue?

This is what PSG has been saying for several hours, especially in the case of the 2018 world champion. The Parisian management still assured on Saturday that it had warned the French team of a muscular overload in Dembélé and the need to rest him to avoid a more serious injury. On the Bleus side, it continued to indicate that the medical results, as well as the player's feelings (expressed to the staff), allowed him to play on Friday, even with only one collective training session under his belt.

"Didier Deschamps would never put a player on the pitch if they thought there was a risk," the Blues staff firmly stated, keen not to get into a controversy and insisting on two points: the constant dialogue between Dembélé and Deschamps as well as the regular relationship between the two medical staffs in recent days. A very different story appeared on the PSG side.

According to Parisian sources, a letter was sent by PSG to the FFF on Thursday to warn against excessive use of the French winger . On Saturday, the capital club regretted the lack of response to this letter, more generally a lack of exchanges and pointed out, bitterly, that Dembélé's last serious injury had already been contracted in the French team (against Spain in June, in the semi-finals of the Nations League), five days after the C1 final.

A controversy that comes as this week, Deschamps, as he has done since the beginning of his mandate, defended peaceful relations with the clubs, always wanting to be diplomatic and refusing the idea of ​​​​forcing to keep a player in the national team. "No, not a lot of pressure. They want to minimize the risks ," he declared about PSG and Dembélé's injury, in the interview he gave us about the infernal pace of internationals. Even if the player wants to come, my priority is not to put him in difficulty. He is between a rock and a hard place..." Now, Paris considers that there was "a serious failure by the French team doctor" and would like to be able to change this relationship.

Beyond the potential responsibility of the French national team's coaching staff, should we also look for the cause of these injuries last year? In other words, is PSG's grueling 2024-2025 season and the lack of thorough preparation after only a three-week break the cause? It's very difficult to argue otherwise. PSG's coaching staff, with their precise workload planning, had anticipated this type of potential problem.

Luis Enrique had thus assumed the fact of giving his players a complete two-week break (with a gradual return in the third week). The Spaniard is too aware of the efforts required - particularly from his attackers - not to anticipate the danger. The alerts - Mayulu, Kvaratskhelia, Ruiz... - and the injuries to Dembélé and Doué validate the coach's fears. Before the injuries, the equation was going to be complicated. It will turn into a puzzle.