The ceremony of the confusion on Ousmane Dembélé lived a new screeching episode this Thursday in the Camp Nou. The Frenchman appeared between whistles for the first time on the pitch since the January crisis, when the club left him out of two calls (Athletic and Alavés), because Vernon’s winger, with a contract until June, refused to renew downwards to reduce the salary mass of the squad. The club put him in the trigger.” He and his agents have been informed that he has to leave the club and seek a transfer before January 31 (…). The sporting situation assessed by our technicians is that we don’t want to have players not committed to the project. And that he is not summoned is a consequence of this whole process. The club is not the one who should determine this, it is the coach but he has our full support because it seems to us a totally coherent attitude”, said Mateu Alemany on the eve of the match against Athletic in which, by the way, Barça was eliminated from the Cup without Dembele.
A couple of weeks later, and with the market closed, Xavi asked Laporta to line up the player. Well aware of the locker room ecosystem, the technician knew that the case could explode in his hands because those distinctions do not sit well with his teammates. Alemany was exposed, who had pointed to Xavi as responsible for a decision that, obviously, was not the coach’s. The problem is that a dangerous breeding ground had already been generated. In the match against Atlético de Madrid, Dembélé, who had already been recovered for the flock, was whistled when he was warming up on the pitch. The next storm could be expected by the time the striker came out to play. And so it was against Napoli.
In what implies the recognition of the failure of the management, Jordi Cruyff, director of international scouting of Barça, asked people not to whistle Dembélé. “Here we are for Barça to win. We don’t want to play ten against twelve because we have one that we are punishing. I understand the public, but when we are on the pitch we have to support the players”, he said at the end of the game against Napoli.
Dembélé ended up hearing applause from the Camp Nou in the match against Napoli, but the situation threatens to repeat itself over and over again. Every match will be a trial that has had its origin in the extreme way of tightening the rope of the Barça leaders, who also did not get the Frenchman to give his arm to twist. Now they realize boomerang Effect, that the management can ruin the atmosphere of the matches between now and the end of the season. Decisive, by the way, in the fight for fourth place. Maybe it’s too late. Perhaps Xavi can only avoid conflict by limiting Dembele’s appearances to away games.