Paris Saint-Germain travelled to face USL Dunkerque in the French Cup semi-finals on Tuesday (2-4 video highlights Dunkerque/PSG). Ousmane Dembélé, the 27-year-old Parisian striker who scored twice on Tuesday, spoke to PSG TV on the sidelines of the match.
Dembélé “we knew we were going to have chances to come back.”
“I think we got into our game well. And then they came into our half twice, and scored twice. But we stayed focused, we knew we were going to have chances to come back.
That goal just before the break gave us confidence, because we knew we were going to get more chances. We had to stay very calm, especially in the final movement, and not rush. This will be the first time I’ve played a Cup final at the Stade de France, so it’ll be special, and we’ll be doing everything we can to win it.”
The hardest thing to do is to stay focused when, against the run of play, you find yourself 2-0 down. But this team has now reached a point where the confidence it has built up enables it to approach every event with serenity. The most important thing was to reduce the score before half-time, so that we could go into the second half with a mental advantage over our opponents.
This was enough to extinguish the Dunkirk team, who found themselves physically outmatched in the second half. All in all, a fine but difficult success for the Parisians, who now reach the final of the competition. On the domestic front, PSG can now look forward to a hat-trick of triumphs, while we wait to see how their European campaign develops.
