Désiré Doué: before the big move

The definitive SCOUTED50 profile on Stade Rennais' latest academy gem.

SCOUTED50 is our collection of the fifty young talents we believe are best positioned to break into the mainstream during 2023/24. Throughout the season, we’ll be detailing all fifty in definitive profiles.

Read the full list here. Désiré Doué came 12th in our ranking.

This profile was produced as part of a commercial collaboration with SkillCorner, SCOUTED’s official data partner. SkillCorner’s tracking and performance data is used by more than 150 of the world’s biggest clubs, leagues and confederations. Learn more.

All stats correct as of 1/7/2024 unless otherwise noted.

At Stade Rennais, if you're good enough, you're old enough. The French club have a strong youth academy set-up that has enabled them to consistently maintain their position somewhere between mid-table and European places.

And when I say ‘strong’, I mean it. Jeanuël Belocian, Lesley Ugochukwu, Georginio Rutter, Mathys Tel, and, of course, Eduardo Camavinga headline their best products in the last five or so years. The problem for Rennes, however, is that they haven't really been able to maximise a fee for any.

They’ll be looking to remedy that with their next budding young starlet: Désiré Doué.

Doué is of the same 2005 vintage as Tel, first catching my eye when I watched him in the UEFA U-17 European Championship in 2022, amongst a stacked French team that also included Warren Zaïre-Emery. The French won that tournament, Tel moved to Bayern München, Zaïre-Emery became an established first-teamer at Paris Saint-Germain, and now Doué is on the precipice of a big move this summer.

In between that U-17 EURO and now, Doué has steadily developed with Rennes. That can be best explained in his uptick in minutes, moving from around 1,400 in his debut professional season in 2022/23, to about 2,400 in 2023/24.

That’s almost 4,000 minutes of senior football before turning 19 — which he did earlier this June.

All of this has lead to murmurs of a move abroad. In the bits I’ve seen of him before sitting down to put together this profile, I’m not fully convinced he could handle it yet. But I’m coming to this with fresh eyes, having seen very little of him since the aforementioned U-17 EURO.

Alright, let’s get straight into it.

---

In this profile:

• What does ‘Premier League ready’ even mean? A breakdown

• A winger whose future might lie in midfield

• An über-talented wildcard who takes risks - and pulls them off

• Some of the most bizarre stats Steve’s ever seen

• Concentration issues mean it’s not quite clicking - yet