Had things worked out differently, Moussa Dembélé would have worn the white of Tottenham Hotspur and be preparing for the club’s Champions League tie against CSKA Moscow at Wembley on Wednesday night. There would also have been the thing about the name clash.

How would he and Mousa Dembélé have been differentiated? “I will go to another club, then,” the Tottenham and Belgium midfielder with the single S had joked in April. “Or, they’ll need to find a nickname for him. We’ll see …”

At that stage, the French centre-forward with the double S still looked likely to move from Fulham to Tottenham as a free agent. The deal had broken down in January, when Fulham had insisted that Dembélé would have to be loaned back to them for the remainder of their fight against relegation from the Championship; Tottenham had wanted him there and then. The fee of £5m – plus a sell-on clause for Fulham – had been agreed, along with personal terms.

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But Mauricio Pochettino, the Tottenham manager, was a big fan, and so why would he not try again for him in the summer, particularly when there promised to be fewer strings?

Enter Celtic. And, enter Brendan Rodgers. In a two-and-a-half-hour meeting with Dembélé in central London, the Celtic manager, who had just joined the club, set out why he wanted to make the 20-year-old his first signing. It is fair to say the meeting went well and Dembélé has not looked back since.

He has worn the hoops of Celtic with distinction and he is preparing for the club’s Champions League tie at Manchester City on Tuesday night as one of the hottest prospects in Europe. It might be a dead rubber for Celtic, as they are certain to finish at the foot of Group C, but it will give Dembélé his latest opportunity to shine on the grandest stage.

The high point of his season was arguably the performance he gave in the home game against City in September, when he scored twice in the 3-3 draw. That there can be a debate serves to illustrate the impact he has had.

Dembélé announced himself with the nerveless last-gasp penalty that settled the Champions League third-round qualifier against Astana and then scored a hat-trick in the Old Firm league victory over Rangers. There has also been the winner against Rangers in the Scottish League Cup semi-final and his goalscoring part in the final victory over Aberdeen, the Champions League equaliser at Borussia Mönchengladbach and his two goals for the France Under-21s in the 3-2 win against England.

He scored 15 league goals for Fulham last season – plus two more in the cups – and it was thanks to him, in large part, that they retained their Championship status. According to Opta, his goals and seven assists were worth 22 points to the club. He was the youngest player to score 15 league goals in the top two divisions of England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France last season.

This season Dembélé has 17 goals in all competitions for Celtic and a buzz has built around him. Having cost Celtic just £500,000 in compensation to Fulham, he has come to be linked on a seemingly weekly basis to Europe’s elite clubs for eight-figure sums. Type his name into Google and you will get the picture. Five months into a four-year contract, the talk is of how long Celtic can hope to keep him. The fact that he is classified as a home-grown player, having joined Fulham at 16 from Paris St-Germain, has been noted by his Premier League suitors.

Dembélé’s youth coach at PSG, Laurent Bonadei, said that Dembélé could become like Raúl, the Spain legend, because of the naturalness of his finishing, and in Glasgow there have been comparisons to Henrik Larsson, the Celtic great, in terms of his capacity to change a game.

“I worked with Didier Drogba at Chelsea and I think Moussa’s of that ilk,” Rodgers said, after the 3-3 draw against City. “He’s a big-game player and he has a belief. He is a boy who can get to the top but there are some things to work upon yet.”

It is also worth recounting Rodgers’ comments that night when a journalist put forward a market valuation for Dembélé. “How much? Are you saying £15m? That’s his left toe,” Rodgers said. “Moussa knows where he’s at and he knows that, in two or three years’ time, if he develops as he can, or how we think he can, the market is there. It doesn’t have to be two or three years – and I don’t think it will be.”

Rodgers’s meeting with Dembélé in London was a defining moment. During it he explained, in great detail, how he intended to use him and, crucially, how he would improve him. What left an impression on Dembélé was how much Rodgers knew about him and his game and, for that, the Celtic scout David Moss can take a good deal of credit. Moss had watched Dembélé since November 2015 and compiled dozens of reports on him. Many clubs had wanted Dembélé but, to the player, it was only Celtic who were consumed by the prospect. They had, evidently, put in the hard yards.

Rodgers also brought up how Luis Suárez had improved under his management at Liverpool, together with Daniel Sturridge and Raheem Sterling. The message to Dembélé was clear: if he was ready to apply himself, he, too, could make serious strides. The Suárez example struck a chord.

Celtic, moreover, could offer him regular playing opportunities in front of a huge home crowd, the chance to develop a winning mentality and to play in the Champions League. It was the ideal fit for the next stage of his development, and Dembélé knew it. To him, it did not matter that he might have earned a larger wage at another club. “Some will follow the money and, believe me, he could have got a lot more money elsewhere,” Rodgers said.

Even Zinedine Zidane had a comment on the business that Celtic had completed. “I like to follow the progress of exciting, young French players and I know that Bayern Munich, Monaco and Juventus were all looking at him – so it really is big that Celtic managed to sign him,” the Real Madrid manager said. “It’s a good move for him. He needs first-team football, to develop the skills he already has and he will get that at Celtic.”

Dembélé grew up in the unforgiving Paris suburb of Cergy and at the age of eight was taken into the PSG setup, where he would meet his best friend, Kingsley Coman, a forward now at Bayern. The pair played together at youth level, where they terrorised opposition defences, but Dembélé, as Coman would do himself, came to fear that there was no career path from the PSG academy to the first team.

Dembélé made the difficult but character-shaping decision to move to Fulham, despite speaking no English, because he was well aware of the west London club’s reputation for developing talent. He came over with his older brother for a chaperone and both of them can tell stories from the early days about how they would communicate through body language and gesture.

The staff at Fulham talk of Dembélé as a personable boy with drive, ever-increasing confidence and massive ambition. He bulked up through hard work in the gym and on the training pitch, and he enjoyed it when he came to be known as The Beast, routinely tweeting Beastmode on match-days.

Dembélé rose through the ranks with Patrick Roberts, another forward now at Celtic – on loan from Manchester City – and, if it has been tough for Fulham to lose them, they can feel pride and vindication at the role they have played in their formation.

Fulham were desperate to tie Dembélé to a new contract and the owner, Shahid Khan, made a personal intervention last season. But there was never any possibility of that happening. Dembélé said when he was unveiled at Celtic he wanted to become the best player in the world. He is convinced he is destined for the top.