Mousa Dembele might not be a Premier League great he will go down as one of the greatest dribblers ever to grace English football.
When the Belgian was first in the top flight at Fulham, after joining from AZ, he was an attacking midfielder that occasionally played as a striker.
Right. No arguments please. This guy is one of the best midfielders dribblers of all time. 🤤 pic.twitter.com/rivrDQWVNG
— Football Tweet (@Football__Tweet) March 29, 2020
But it was at Spurs where he truly thrived as a deep-lying midfielder.
Dembele wasn’t known for his goals and only scored 10 goals in his time in North London, but he regularly dominated the game in the middle of the park.
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His perfect blend of strength and skill made it almost impossible for players to get the ball off him, regularly rolling them and sprinting away. The former Standard Liege man was so good to watch that Mauricio Pochettino, his manager during his best years at Spurs, compared him to a whole host of greats that he played with in his career. “I can talk about [Dembele] because I know very well him after nearly four years,” Pochettino told a pre-match news conference back in February 2018.
“I have told you – and some people use my word to describe him – he is a genius of football. “He is this type of player I put next to Ronaldinho, Maradona, [Jay-Jay] Okocha – players that I was lucky to play with. For me, he is one of the unbelievable talents in the history of football. “For him, it was always difficult to be fit – he’s always fighting for his fitness – but now he’s in an amazing moment and he deserves all the praise people are giving him.” The 2017/18 campaign, his best by a long way, proved to be his last full season at Spurs and Dembele would depart for Chinese Super League outfit Guangzhou R&F halfway through the 2018/19 season. Featured Image Credit: PA & Twitter |