Melchie Dumornay: Rising Star in Women's Football

Four years ago, in a quiet conversation midway through Melchie Dumornay’s first season at Reims, her coach Amandine Miquel dropped a line that sounded outrageous and obvious all at once.

She said the teenager was “at 30 per cent of her level”.

Anyone who had watched Dumornay back then knew the ceiling was high. Her touch, her timing, her fearlessness – all of it screamed superstar in the making. But 30 per cent? When she was already ripping through defences and dictating games?

Season by season, that quote has aged better than most scouting reports.

The gamble in Champagne

Dumornay’s first big decision was not about glamour. It was about minutes.

When she left Haiti for Reims, plenty of people back home wanted a different headline. They stopped her in the street to ask where she would sign when she turned 18.

“So who is it? Paris Saint-Germain or Lyon?”

Reims did not fit that fantasy. She knew it. She heard it.

“I know that it might disappoint some people in some way that I'm moving to Reims,” she admitted at the time. “But people who know football will understand my decision. For the other people, it's okay. I will prove them wrong in the future.”

Reims, a modest club in France’s Champagne region, offered something the giants could not guarantee: a starting place, the freedom to fail, and the space to grow. Miquel saw the calculation clearly.

“She knew she would be in a good championship, but she would still be an important player and not just a substitute,” the coach explained.

The numbers underline how right that call was. Across two seasons, Dumornay played 39 times and scored 23 goals. She didn’t just survive in France; she became the heartbeat of a team. By the time she left, the move everyone had been whispering about in Haiti was no longer a dream. It was inevitable.

Lyon were waiting.

From dream trial to Lyon reality

Dumornay had already sampled life at OL before she was old enough to sign, trialling with the eight-time European champions and seeing up close what domination in French women’s football looked like. The ambition formed early: one day, this would be home.

After Reims, it finally was.

If there were doubts about whether she could handle the pressure of stepping into Lyon’s ruthless environment, they did not last long. Anyone still wondering only had to rewind to the summer of 2023.

Haiti, led by their young star, were chasing history. In the Women’s World Cup play-off against Chile, Dumornay scored both goals in a 2-1 win that sent the Caribbean nation to the tournament for the first time. It was the kind of night that changes how a country sees itself.

At the World Cup in Australia, Haiti landed in a brutal group: European champions England, Asian champions China, and Euro 2017 runners-up Denmark. On paper, they were fodder. On the pitch, they were anything but.

Haiti lost all three games, but they were competitive in each one, and Dumornay refused to shrink. Against England, she stood out so much that BBC Sport readers named the then-19-year-old Player of the Match, even though the Lionesses won 1-0. She met the stage, then raised it, growing into a leader as the world watched.

The Lyon move no longer looked like a risk. It looked like a natural step.

A setback, then a surge

Her OL career did not begin with fireworks. It began with an ankle injury.

Just as she was settling in, Dumornay spent more than three months on the sidelines. For a 20-year-old at a superclub, that can be brutal. You can get forgotten quickly at a place where winning is non-negotiable.

She refused to drift.

When she returned in the 2023-24 season, she timed her resurgence to perfection. Over the 11 games that followed her comeback, she produced five goals and five assists, arriving just as the trophies came into focus.

Her most devastating work came in the Champions League semi-final against PSG. Across the two legs, she scored twice and set up two more in a 5-3 aggregate win that shoved Lyon back into another final and pushed their domestic rivals aside.

Barcelona, though, were a different beast.

In the showpiece, Dumornay led the line but managed just one shot in a game where Lyon never quite hit their familiar heights. Barca were solid, controlled, and clinical. OL were second best.

Even so, the bigger picture was hard to ignore. At 20, after a serious injury and a major move, Dumornay had become a key player in one of the most demanding squads in the sport and finished the year with two trophies.

“I always believed that if I'm in Lyon, I would progress every day,” she told GOAL before the 2024-25 season. “That's what's happening.”

She wasn’t exaggerating.

A new role, the same dominance

The next step came with a change on the touchline.

Jonatan Giraldez, fresh from his all-conquering spell at Barcelona, took over at Lyon at the start of this season. One of his first big calls was to shift where Dumornay did her damage.

For two years, she had operated much higher up, often in the zones a classic No.9 would occupy. She scored, she pressed, she stretched defences. It worked. But Giraldez saw something else.

He moved her back into midfield, sometimes as a No.10, sometimes a little deeper. It was, crucially, the role she has always preferred.

“Because I want to be everywhere,” she has said.

The effect has been immediate. With the game in front of her, Dumornay is more involved than ever. Her touches per match have climbed in both the league and the Champions League. With that has come a spike in key passes and overall influence.

“We know that Melchie is one of the best players in the world,” Giraldez said earlier this season. “We have to find her as many times as possible.”

It is a simple calculation. The more Dumornay sees the ball, the more dangerous Lyon become. This is a squad stacked with world-class talent, but she is operating at a level that brushes against Ballon d’Or conversations. When a player is that decisive, you build around her.

“A No.9 only gets the chance to do very specific things,” Giraldez said this week. “I think she's very capable of doing different things.”

He is using that versatility ruthlessly.

Still nowhere near the ceiling

What makes all of this so striking is the sense that there is still another gear.

Over the last two years, it is hard to argue against Dumornay being among the very best players on the planet, and on certain nights, the standout. Her power, her balance, her technique – they combine into a profile that defenders hate and coaches cherish.

Her team-mates feel it too. Ingrid Engen, now alongside her at Lyon but once tasked with stopping her for Barcelona in the 2024 UWCL final, summed it up bluntly.

“I must say, it's nice to have her as a team-mate,” the defender admitted. “She's definitely a threat and someone I really had to try to manage as well as possible in that game. She's very difficult to manage because she has this strength, she has the power, she has the technique – she has it all, really.”

That “all” still isn’t complete.

“This is not the top,” Giraldez said before Saturday’s final in Oslo.

He is right. Miquel’s old 30 per cent line no longer fits, but 100 per cent still feels a long way off. Dumornay has already carried a nation to a World Cup, transformed Reims, forced her way into Lyon’s core, and shaped Champions League ties. She is 20.

The present is already good enough to tilt a European final. The future, somehow, looks even more daunting for anyone standing in her way.

For Haiti, for Lyon, for the women’s game, the scariest part is also the most thrilling: this really is only the start.