EWorld champion comes onto the transfer market: FC Barcelona wants to sell former Dortmund Bundesliga professional Ousmane Dembélé in the winter. After his ultimatum for a contract extension, coach Xavi deleted the Frenchman from the squad for the cup round of 16 this Thursday evening (9:30 p.m.) at Athletic Bilbao.
“It’s obvious to us that the player doesn’t want to stay at Barcelona and doesn’t feel committed to Barca’s future,” football director Mateu Alemany said on club TV. “We told him and his agents that he had to leave immediately because we wanted dedicated players!” Alemany continued, “one hopes that a transfer will take place before January 31.” That Dembélé (24) is not responsible for that Bilbao game was nominated, Alemany called “only logical. The coach has our support and our backing.” Xavi had stated that Dembélé should extend his contract or leave. The negotiations have been dragging on for half a year.
Barca have been in talks with the former Dortmund striker and his agent since July 2021. “We made different offers, tried to find a way for the player to continue with us. And those offers were systematically rejected by his agents,” Alemany said. Spanish media wrote that Dembélé had repeatedly assured the coach that he wanted to stay with the team. But his agent Moussa Sissoko did not accept the offer made five months ago because the club wanted to pay the player a significantly lower salary in the future.
Speaking to French radio station RMC, Sissoko criticized the club’s behavior: “If Barcelona had wanted to negotiate, they could have tried to sit down and talk to us. But there is no talk, only threats to stop playing in their team. And that is forbidden.”
The financially and sportingly ailing club has debts of 1.35 billion euros. Barca are trying to reduce the level of salaries or by selling or hiring out professionals to comply with league rules for total sum of professional salaries. Barcelona can only collect a fee for Dembélé in the current transfer window.
The later world champion switched from BVB to Barcelona in 2017 for around 140 million euros. In Dortmund, the Frenchman had also caused a stir before moving to Spain when, among other things, he put pressure on BVB with a training strike and thus forced his departure to FC Barcelona.
“I’m not a man who cheats, let alone a man who allows himself to be blackmailed,” wrote the Frenchman at the end of a long message, in which he also lamented a false public image of himself. He is “still under contract, I am fully available to my club and my coach. There are negotiations, I let my advisor take care of that.”
