PSG no longer waits for one of its players to get injured. This is one of the new innovations introduced by the Parisian club, which since last season, always thanks to one of Luis Enrique's intuitions, has been trying to prevent injuries using data, their reactions and the player's experience. This is one of the keys to the club's success in the last two seasons. PSG no longer suffers injuries like before, but prevents them and can send some players on isolated rest for 4-5 days, before the situation worsens.
Since last season, Nuno, Vitinha, Fabian Ruiz and now Dembélé have already followed this method. The French striker comes after the semi-finals of the 2026 World Cup and has taken advantage of three weeks of rest. The days of rest, however, have served the player mainly to relax and at the same time to continue training, in view of the European Super Cup that was to be played in mid-summer. Dembélé would have accelerated the pace and precisely for this reason Luis Enrique, after replacing him against Lens, considered stopping him for a few days.
"In agreement with the coach and the sports management, Ousmane Dembélé will benefit from a period of rest over the next few days. He will return to training on Monday with the entire group." The Frenchman will miss today's and tomorrow's training sessions, as well as Friday's match against Lille. The team will then take advantage of the weekend off, so the former Barcelona player will only miss two training sessions. Luis Enrique understood that, in order to reach optimal form as quickly as possible, Dembélé was pushing himself beyond his limits and for this reason, seeing the risk of a nagging injury, he gave him these days of rest. It is a type of protocol that Luis Enrique has implemented for a long time at PSG, achieving a drastic reduction in injuries.
En accord avec l'entraîneur et la direction sportive, Ousmane Dembélé benefitera d'une période de repos ces prochains jours. Il reprendra l'entraînement lundi avec l'ensemble du groupe.
— Paris Saint-Germain (@PSG_inside) August 25, 2026
Luis Enrique thought of finding a solution after the numerous protests over the years due to the tight match schedule and the little rest given to the players to recover from one match to the next. The Spaniard's is the classic example of a coach who goes beyond the norm, which is a step forward. Luis Enrique knows well what the problems are in managing the team and thinks about how to solve them, without asking for a longer bench and consequently a greater economic effort from the club, but by optimizing the value he has available, managing it and doing a kind of "ordinary maintenance" of everything he has.
Therefore, it can be said that in this regard, the PSG coach has acted without stopping to think about the possible solutions that will one day be approved by FIFA and UEFA to solve – eventually – the problem of the excessively busy calendar of matches. And for those who thought that there had been a clash between Luis Enrique and Dembélés, considering this as a disciplinary measure against him, they were completely wrong.
