{"id":482324,"date":"2026-02-15T21:17:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T21:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/482324\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T21:17:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T21:17:10","slug":"luis-enrique-defends-ousmane-dembele-after-ballon-dor-winner-took-aim-at-psg-team-mates-following-shock-rennes-defeat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/482324\/","title":{"rendered":"Luis Enrique defends Ousmane Dembele after Ballon d&#8217;Or winner took aim at PSG team-mates following shock Rennes defeat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Dembele has had a stop-start season due to injury but has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goal.com\/en\/lists\/winners-losers-weekend-football-ousmane-dembele-arne-slot-luis-diaz\/blt26677f20cd4069d6\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">returned to his devastating best of late,<\/a> scoring six goals in his last six Ligue 1 matches amidst a run of seven successive victories until Friday\u2019s defeat.<\/p>\n<p>There is no doubt that the campaign will have been a frustrating one for the France international, who won the Ballon d\u2019Or in September in a momentous achievement which was followed by months of recurring injury issues on the pitch.<\/p>\n<p>PSG have struggled to match the heights of last season thus far but considering their late surge to glory in the Champions League last season, where they peaked in the knock-out stages, all is still yet to play for both domestically and in Europe.<\/p>\n<p>The Parisian giants face the first leg of their Champions League knockout play-off round away at domestic rivals Monaco on Tuesday night, with the return leg eight days later as they look to reach the last 16 for the 14th successive season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dembele has had a stop-start season due to injury but has returned to his devastating best of late,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":482325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,18944,92955,86796,24419,244478,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-482324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-ligue-1","12":"tag-luis-enrique","13":"tag-o-dembele","14":"tag-paris-saint-germain","15":"tag-rennes-vs-paris-saint-germain","16":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/482325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}