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«But what can we do with

Dembélé

?

Have it until June in the stands?

He is just another player on the team and we have to treat him as such, no matter how much he has let us down.

He will respond in games and, above all, in training."

This is how they expressed themselves yesterday from the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper in the face of the complicated situation of the French winger, who will exhaust his contract with Barcelona on June 30 in order to sign with another club in exchange for a generous signing bonus.

A large sector of the board, including president

Joan Laporta

, was betting on never seeing Dembélé wearing the Barcelona shirt again.

Even the leaders came to explore the possibility of offering the footballer the salary that he still has to collect in exchange for the freedom letter, something that the striker rejected.

In the Barça board, the feeling weighs heavily that Dembélé's agents were toying with the Barça renewal offer, even knowing for months that the priority would be to reject any proposal for continuity.

The footballer, in fact, did not want to know anything in the winter market of clubs like Tottenham, Chelsea or PSG.

He, much less, heeded the offer to continue from Barcelona, ​​which was willing to make him one of the highest paid players in the squad.

Do not stop other progressions

In the last few hours and after several contacts between the management leadership and the coaching staff,

Xavi Hernández

has tried to make Laporta see that, beyond the emotional damage of seeing Dembélé get away with it, sporting criteria must prevail.

Even more so in a Barcelona whose priority is to capture one of the four places that give access to the next Champions League and that this Sunday faces one of its direct rivals for the same goal,

Diego Simeone

's Atlético .

The journalist Javier Miguel, in fact, advanced yesterday in the

As

newspaper that Dembélé will even be part of the starting team against the rojiblancos along with two of the new signings,

Adama Traoré

and

Ferran Torres

, Aubameyang

waiting for

his opportunity from the bench.

What they do expect from the board is that Dembélé's presence does not curtail the progression of footballers who may have a longer career at the club.

Although Xavi understands that Dembélé's particular characteristics are still essential, either because of his unpredictability, always on the border between genius and nonsense, or because he is one of the few players on the team who are capable of advancing in small spaces through dodge.

«Dembélé, in his position, can be the best in the world.

He has the conditions to be a world

crack

», Xavi came to cry the day of the presentation of him as coach of Barcelona.

Those were times, however, when the club still trusted the word of the striker, who insisted that he would not move from the Camp Nou and that the economic aspect would always be secondary in his decision.

It was not so.

emotional indifference

The presumed return of Dembélé to the big stage, however, will not be easy, no matter how much he has an old accomplice in the locker room in Aubameyang (they coincided for one season at Borussia Dortmund).

This week, TV3 collected a survey in which 78.1% of fans claimed that they would whistle the French footballer if they saw him again on the Camp Nou pitch.

Circumstance that the club assumes, but that the coaching staff is willing to face before that bearing of marked emotional indifference that accompanies the Frenchman in matches.

Dembélé's problems, of course, go far beyond the emotional outburst of a hurt board and the coach's survival instinct.

He has not played since January 12, when he played the 120 minutes of the defeat against Real Madrid (2-3) in the semifinal of the Spanish Super Cup in Arabia.

And this season, in the eleven games played he has only scored one goal.

In the field of Linares.

Xavi wants football to be the only judge of him.

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Know more

  • football

  • FC Barcelona

  • Ousmane Dembele

  • Xavi Hernandez

  • Joan Laporta

  • Atletico Madrid

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