As we anticipated in AS, the FC Barcelona coaching staff, headed by Xavi Hernández is not in favor of leaving Ousmane Dembélé in the stands until June 30. The coach’s plans go through recovering the player and adding him to the cause, aware that it would be wasting a talent that may be necessary for the challenges that the team still has this season: win the Europa League and qualify among the top four in LaLiga.
However, this decision must be agreed with the high levels of the club. Both the president Joan Laporta and the director of football Mateu Alemany have led the crusade against the French striker, urging him to leave the club due to “lack of commitment to the sports project”, as Alemany himself explained in the club’s official media . But nevertheless, the club’s threats and ultimatums have ended up being unproductive: Dembélé will continue at Barcelona until June 30, after systematically rejecting all the exit proposals offered by the club, the last one coming from English Tottenham.
However, now, after the player’s refusal to go out in the winter market, a new scenario has been opened. The club has to decide what the next steps will be: if the idea of leaving him in the stands is maintained, from here to the rest of the season, a position defended by the high levels of the entity, or on the contrary, the doors are opened to help the team in the final stretch of the course, argument defended by the technicians.
There is a third way, raised by the journalist Xavi Torres on the TV3 program ‘Onze’, regarding Ousmane’s future: the possibility of the club giving him a release letter, even though the registration period has already ended, with the in order to remove a good part of the token that remains to be paid.
In any case, a decision of depth and importance, which can be resolved in the next few hours, since a summit between Xavi, Laporta and Alemany to decide the future of Dembélé. Xavi will press so that the Frenchman can play, taking into account that it does not help the group to have a player on the sidelines and, even less, when the club pays him a real mortar, being one of the highest players in the squad. It will be necessary to see if the technician’s arguments convince the highest officials of FC Barcelona, who have already demonstrated their absolute intransigence in the case of Ilaix Moriba, who did not play a single more game after rejecting the renewal offer.
In any case, no matter what happens in this high-flying Blaugrana summit, what seems evident is that Dembélé will not continue in the FC Barcelona beyond the next June 30, thus becoming one of the great fiascoes in the history of the club. That is in the event that the club does not decide to give him the freedom letter immediately and he becomes a free agent who can sign for the club he wants.