Rags fly between Barcelona and Ousmane Dembélé: the French striker, paid by the bluagrana over 100 million when he was taken by Borussia Dortmund, was put out with immediate effect.
A few hours after the ultimatum given by Xavi at the press conference a Ousmane Dembele – “either renew or a decision has to be made“- Barcelona made the decision and it is also noisy. The time for unfinished appointments and useless chatter from the agent is over, patience as well. The 24-year-old French striker – who had been paid a good 105 million plus bonuses in 2017, when he came from Borussia Dortmund – was excluded from the squad for the Copa del Rey match that tonight will see the blaugrana go away to San Mamés to face Athletic Bilbao. Dragging a player to maturity until June is therefore not an option contemplated: either in or out. And in the absence of any move by the player’s entourage, Barça clicked on out.
After the already very clear words on the subject pronounced by Xavi yesterday, he thinks about it now the sporting director of the Catalan club, Mateu Alemany, to explain the situation regarding Dembélé well: “We started conversations with Ousmane and his agents around the month of July. In all this time, 6 months, almost 7 months, we talked, we talked, Barça made several offers, tried to find a way to keep the player with us and those offers were systematically rejected by their agents. Today, 20 January, eleven days before the closing of the last transfer window, it is clear that it seems obvious to us that the player does not want to continue at Barcelona and is not committed to Barça’s future project.“.
Hence the drastic and no longer postponable conclusion announced by the Blaugrana executive: “In this scenario it was communicated to him and his agents that he must leave immediately, because we want players involved and we hope that the transfer will take place by January 31st. The sporting consequence of all this, evaluated by the technical staff and our coach, is that we don’t want to have players with us who don’t want to be at Barça, and therefore the fact that he has not been called up is nothing more than a consequence of this whole process. . The club is not the one to decide, the manager decided it and has our support. It seems to us an absolutely coherent attitude“.
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At this point, in the absence of renewal and having excluded the option of leaving him in the stands until June, there is therefore only one way forward: the immediate departure of Dembélé. Barcelona are working against the clock to arrive at a quick exit for the player: they have eleven days to find a club willing to pay for his transfer, knowing full well that given the Frenchman’s contractual situation – but above all the very high salary he still has. guaranteed for a semester – chances of anyone coming forward now are slim.
According to what Mundo Deportivo writes, in case no buyer is found in the current transfer window, Barcelona would also consider give the player the free list, terminating the contract. In any case, the story between Dembélé and the blaugrana club is over, at the end of a first part of the season where the Frenchman once again confirmed the physical fragility that affected his entire career: for him only 11 seasonal appearances, with only one goal scored.
