The genius of Mousa Dembele What makes the Spurs midfield maestro tick?
Tottenham’s Belgian playmaker is rated by all who play with or against him,
In the summer of 2012, Dimitar Berbatov was waiting to board a flight to Florence when his phone rang. On the line was Martin Jol, his old Tottenham Hotspur manager, who was now in charge of Fulham. Berbatov was leaving Manchester United, and Jol was desperate to lure him back to London.
“I had to do a lot of talking,” Jol remembers. “He was ready to go to Fiorentina, and I had to talk him out of it.” Berbatov, curious but by no means convinced, had one simple question: was Mousa Dembele staying? “Of course Dembele is staying,” Jol replied, knowing that his answer could make or break the deal.
It did not quite work out like that, and Dembele soon signed for Spurs. A few days after Berbatov had committed to joining Fulham, Jol joked that they were lucky the Bulgarian had not stormed out of the building once he had learnt of Dembele’s departure.
Berbatov’s appreciation of Dembele’s class, and his disappointment at not being able to call him a team-mate, is indicative of how highly the midfielder is regarded by those within the game, even if it has taken starring roles in recent performances against Arsenal and Juventus for wider recognition finally to come his way.
Dele Alli, Eric Dier, Victor Wanyama, Danny Rose and Harry Winks, his team-mates at Spurs, have all said in separate interviews that the Belgian, rather than Harry Kane or Christian Eriksen, is the team’s best player. Jan Vertonghen, who plays with Dembele at club and international level, added last year: “I don’t think people know how good Mousa is.”
The appreciation extends to the opposition. Ross Barkley has said that Dembele
(right) is the most difficult opponent he has faced, while
Crystal Palace’s
James Mcarthur was saying three years ago that Dembele was the best player he had played against. Even a confidential Newport County scouting report, leaked after their FA Cup meeting earlier this year, described Dembele as “by far” the most important Spurs player.
“Everybody that plays with him knows exactly how good he is,” says Bobby Zamora, who was Fulham’s main centre-forward when Dembele joined the club as a £5million striker from Dutch side AZ Alkmaar in 2010. “I don’t think fans and people that watch the game can appreciate what he does. When you play with him, you see.”
A quiet, religious man who, Zamora says, took both football and life seriously, it was not until Dembele’s second season at Fulham that he truly thrived. He was helped by Jol, who joined a year after Dembele and converted him from attacker to midfielder.
“He started off as a striker at Willem II, then he played for AZ Alkmaar and they played him on the wing,” says Jol. “When I came to Fulham, I knew they had bought him for the wing or as a striker.
“But when I saw him in training, when he dropped off they could not get the ball off him. He recovered the ball all the time because of his strength, so I thought if he played in midfield he would probably be OK. But you never know, so I tried. From that moment on, he was our best player. I have never seen a transition like that before.”
Talk to those who have shared a pitch with Dembele and it is his strength that dominates the conversation. “Even in day-today training, he would not give the ball away,” says Zamora. “That on its own stands out, and his ability to go past people. I would not say he’s particularly quick, but it was his balance and his body strength. He carries his weight quite low and he’s so strong in the hips.” Tim Sherwood, who managed Dembele at Spurs, says the Belgian’s team-mates would fall about laughing in training because they could not take the ball away from him. “When I was his manager, I felt secure every time the ball was passed into him,” Sherwood says. “Some of them get it in their own half and you hold your breath.”
The move to Spurs, for a fee of about £15million, came amid speculation that United were interested in bringing him to Old Trafford. In the words of Sherwood, who was the club’s technical director when Dembele arrived, “the club wanted a player who could get the ball from the defence and take it forward”.
If it sounds simple, then that’s because it is. Dembele sets the tempo and controls the game, all with that same serene facial expression. It is simplicity married with power, and his domineering performances have been key to the development of Mauricio Pochettino’s side into one of Europe’s most feared teams. “Without Dembele,” Pochettino once said, “we do not exist.”
It seems fitting that Dembele is almost as unique a character off the field as he is on it. His mother was a professional painter, while he has in the past listed musicals and acoustic guitar among his “diverse” interests.
“He’s a shy boy, and there was one occasion when we had a chat and he didn’t tell me about a hamstring problem,” Sherwood says. “The physio came in five minutes later and said that Mousa was struggling. He hadn’t even mentioned it to me.”
Perhaps this personality is one of the reasons it has taken so long for a player who commands such respect among his colleagues to be lauded by the wider footballing world. Another factor could be his disappointing goalscoring return of seven league goals for Spurs.
A further factor is his injury record. Dembele has suffered more than 40 injuries since joining Spurs in 2012, and Jol believes many of his fitness troubles were the result of the unfamiliar demands of playing in midfield. “Up front you can occasionally take a little pause,” he says. “He was not used to it, but now he is.”
Juventus, bullied out of the game on their own turf, will testify to that. As will Pochettino, who refers to the 30-year-old as his “genius”. He has long been seen that way by those who know him, and his peers will no doubt view the praise now coming his way to be as belated as it is deserved.