The Japan Times - PSG facing injury crisis as Barcelona present first big test

The headline absentee is Ousmane Dembele, fresh from winning the Ballon d'Or last week as recognition for his magnificent 2024/25 campaign, in which the France winger scored 35 goals.

How Dembele would have loved to come up against the Catalans, the club he left in 2023 after six years in which he showed moments of brilliance but struggled for consistency -- and with injuries.

The 28-year-old could have taken on Lamine Yamal, the teenager who he pipped to the Ballon d'Or award but who did win the Kopa Trophy for the best player in the world last season aged under 21.

But Dembele is still recovering from a thigh injury picked up on international duty with France at the beginning of the month, and is not expected back for at least another couple of weeks.

"It is going well. I will be back very soon," Dembele told French television after taking the acclaim of the PSG support with the Ballon d'Or trophy following Saturday's 2-0 win against Auxerre.

Coach Luis Enrique has also been missing Desire Doue, the thrilling 20-year-old attacker who finished second to Yamal in the Kopa Trophy ranking -- he has not played since suffering a calf injury on France duty at the same time as Dembele.

Then there is centre-back and captain Marquinhos and all-action Portuguese midfielder Joao Neves, who are nursing thigh and hamstring injuries respectively.

Playmaker Vitinha, third in the Ballon d'Or, came off before half-time at the weekend while Khvicha Kvaratskhelia was withdrawn at the interval.

PSG's hope is that both players were taken off early enough to prevent any lasting damage, but suddenly Luis Enrique's options are being drastically reduced.

"We have to stay positive because we need to be able to manage this situation," the coach, a former Barcelona player and manager, said on Saturday after the win against Auxerre.

"Paris Saint-Germain are not the only team with injuries. It is the case for every team with such an intense calendar."

- Too many games catching up -

The Parisians played 65 games during 2024/25, in a season spanning 11 months. That included 17 matches in the Champions League and seven in the Club World Cup, where their marathon campaign concluded with a 3-0 loss to Chelsea in mid-July.

It seems the effort is catching up with individual players: Dembele has played 99 games for PSG since signing just over two years ago, and 20 for France over the same period.

Vitinha has made 113 appearances for PSG since the start of 2023/24 and 21 more for Portugal.

For PSG's star right-back Achraf Hakimi the figure over the same time is 131 games between club and country -- and he has the Africa Cup of Nations coming up this season as well as the World Cup next year.

Luis Enrique needs to give these players more of a rest, and figures within football insist too many games damages the product.

"We think club owners are beginning to realise that this is bad for business," pointed out Alex Phillips, the secretary general of FIFPro, last week.

A Champions League showdown between the Spanish champions and the reigning French and European champions is the sort of stage on which the newly-crowned best player on the planet should be featuring.

Instead PSG may need to dig deep into their resources, although their squad depth is being exposed as perhaps not as strong as it needed to be.

Despite that Luis Enrique's side head to Catalonia off the back of a big 4-0 win against Atalanta in their European opener a fortnight ago.

In any case, a defeat here may not prove to be a big setback in terms of achieving their main goal of reaching the knockout stage -- after all, there will be more than enough games remaining in the league phase.

S.Ogawa--JT