It's never going to happen for Ousmane Dembele! France need to move on from PSG enigma to reignite faltering attack at Euro 2024

Why? Because the feeling somehow persists, despite all of the evidence to the contrary accumulated over the past seven years, that Dembele will belatedly come good.

However, the word coming out of the France camp ahead of Tuesday's crunch Euro 2024 clash with Poland is that Didier Deschamps is considering dropping Dembele for the game in Dortmund, where he first announced himself to the wider world as a thrilling teenage talent with the brightest of futures ahead of him.

That was eight years ago, though. Dembele's 27 now. He should be at his peak - and yet we're still waiting for him to realise his potential.

Such patience is somewhat explicable. There are few more exciting sights in football than a nimble winger tearing a full-back to shreds. Dembele was blessed with that ability. Anyone who has watched him live will attest to the truly breathtaking turn of pace. Then, there's the "amazing" set of skills that Thomas Tuchel used to marvel at during their time together at Dortmund.

The great Andres Iniesta even said that Dembele had "genius" in his feet, while Martin Braithwaite couldn't believe what he was seeing after training with Dembele for the first time at Barcelona. "I have never seen someone with his talent. I'm serious!” the Dane told Tot Costa. "Leo Messi is something else but, after him, I haven't seen any player like Dembele. The boy is special."

It was a view shared by Messi himself. He labelled a teenage Dembele "a phenomenon on the field", quite clearly insinuating that his young team-mate wasn't quite as impressive off it. "It depends on him how good he becomes."

It proved a salient point.

Dembele, by his own admission, "wasted" five years of his career at Barcelona, with a dreadfully unprofessional approach contributing to incessant injury issues and infuriating inconsistency.

"If you want to be a great player, you have to work; your talent is not enough," Dembele told RMC Sport in September 2022. "I didn't know it before, but now I see that it is essential to work on and off the field. The injuries came because, when I was younger, I didn't work as hard as I do now. It's clear that if you don't work, you can't enjoy football, you're not going to play much and you're going to get injured. Now, I'm stronger."

The penny, it seemed, had dropped. It looked as if French football's 'enfant terrible' had finally grown up. But while Dembele's injury record has unquestionably improved over the past two years, his efficacy has not.

Barcelona felt betrayed by Dembele last summer when he took advantage of a release clause in his contract to negotiate a move to Paris Saint-Germain. The Catalans had stuck by him through think and thin and club president Joan Laporta had always advocated "special treatment" for such a "genius". However, his faith in Dembele was always baffling, given the Frenchman has never proven himself remotely reliable. This is a contrary character that has always received more chances from clubs and coaches that he creates for colleagues.

During six years in Spain, he never managed more than eight league goals across an entire campaign, while he scored just three times in Ligue 1 last season. Rather tellingly, his only two goals during PSG's run to the semi-finals of the Champions League came against Barcelona - which only strengthened the suspicion that Dembele could be a world-class winger if only he wanted it enough.

Laporta once said "the whole Dembele thing is difficult to understand." He was referring to the player's peculiar stance during contract negotiations, but it's a statement that could be applied to the whole Dembele phenomenon.

He won three Spanish titles with Barcelona and must be regarded as the biggest waste of money in the club's history (no mean feat!). He's also lifted the World Cup and yet his international career is perhaps best summed up by his withdrawal just 41 minutes into the 2022 final in Qatar after what former England international Stuart Pearce called "the worst performance" he'd ever seen.

Truth be told, he could have had no complaints if he'd never played for France again - and yet he arrived in Germany for Euro 2024 as a starter. Of course, that's primarily down to the fact that Kingsley Coman only returned to action just before the end of the season.

With the Bayern Munich man having had a few more weeks since then to get back up to full speed, it's easy to understand why there is mounting talk of Coman - or even Randal Kolo Muani - starting in place of Dembele for France's final group game.

After all, Dembele has scored just one goal for his country in the past three years (in a 14-0 win over Gibraltar), his most recent assist came when Les Bleus last faced Poland at the 2022 World Cup, while his performances in the first two group games in Germany were atrocious. Indeed, he's already lost the ball 27 times in 146 minutes of action, had just five touches in the opposition box, completed only four dribbles (as many as John McGinn) and created just three chances (fewer than N'Golo Kante).

Perhaps Deschamps will give Dembele another chance. Maybe he'll even find some form. If his career to date has taught us anything, though, it won't last. It never does with Dembele.

The only consistent aspect of his game is its inefficiency. The only thing he can be relied on to do is let you down. It's time for France to stop waiting for Dembele - and defending him too.