The real reasons for Dembélé's injuries

Ousmane Dembélé saw his season end at the beginning of February with a new injury. The Barcelona he will not be able to count on him in six months and his aspirations to participate in the 2020 Euro Cup with France They have vanished. The extreme has been constantly in the spotlight of fans for their ease of injury, always blamed on their lifestyle (junk food, sleep, etc). But the truth is that, just as the player had no problems in recognizing that his habits were not the most appropriate, during this campaign he has been trying to correct them. Moreover, what attracts attention in the Barcelona is that until he was signed for 145 million, the player had never been injured. L'Equipe He explained in detail what it was like and what Dembélé's life is like and what motives have led him to go through such an ordeal with injuries.

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The high price they paid could be one of the first triggers for stress, which should be taken into account a blow during one of his last training with Borussia Dortmund. Not speaking clearly about the incident that caused him to force his departure has been able to weigh him in the long run. In any case, the truth is that in the German club he was never injured, although Thomas Tuchel I was on top of him all day.

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* Data updated as of March 3, 2020

In Barcelona he lives with Moustapha Diatta (his best friend) and his uncle. From Borussia Dortmund they say that they have “fantasized” about his lifestyle, although in his first year in Barcelona he was not the most suitable. Now, so you are not so alone, Moussa Sissoko (your representative residing in London), has stayed very often in Barcelona, ​​giving greater attention to the player.

Anthony Audebaud, his full-time chef hired for this campaign, guarantees that Dembélé has already put aside junk food and now has a comprehensive control of his diet: “There is no longer any pre-cooked products or soft drinks, there are only fresh and healthy products. Ousmane is good at playing football and he thought that just that was enough, but he is growing and learning. Today, eat sea bream, sea bass, rooster and many vegetables. It is difficult to see all this work and bad luck with injuries, because they have never looked after him so much. He is a very homely and calm boy, there are never parties at home. I imposed meal times because he asked for it and now everything is written. It's very professional. “

In this way, Dembélé has changed Coca-Cola for fruit juices, but has also improved his sleep hours (Needless to mention the anecdote of his nap on the airport couch). However, going to bed late (not partying) is a practice that all young players usually do: “All the Z generation players go to bed late. They are not people of tomorrow. Twelve or one o'clock in the morning is early for them and not only happens to Ousmane. If we say that about him, we can also quote Benjamin Mendy, Lucas Hernández, Kylian Mbappé … We cannot ask Dembélé and Lloris to behave in the same way because they do not have the same lifestyle. We are aware of this, only that your muscles have not endured. “

The problem is that neither in Rennes nor in Borussia Dortmund had he ever been injured. He played 100% of the possible matches (29 of 29) with the French club and 96% of the possible matches with the German (47 of 49), but none of those two encounters missed them for being injured. In Barcelona, ​​however, he has played 40% of the meetings in his first course (23 of 28, of which 27 due to injuries), 70% in the second (42 of 60, of which 14 for injuries) and in the third 25% of the possible matches (9 of 36 of which, 24 due to injury). At the Aspetar clinic in Doha, where the player has been treated, they asked for the player's GPS data. Here they found an important fact, and that is that in training, 20% of the time involved in the plays was done to the sprint, while in the games that figure amounted to 90%, which suggests that the requirement in the parties sometimes exceeds him. In that sense, they explain that Dembélé's explosive profile clashes with the training style of the Barça club regardless of whether he sits on the bench Ernesto Valverde or Quique Setién, which means that if your level of demand arrives when a match approaches, you are more exposed to possible injuries. The French newspaper also collects the words of Michel Troin, assistant of Philippe Montanier in the Monaco, which explains that “there was a rush to make him play”: “There are cultures of clubs that do not match the needs of the players they recruit.” They expose the case of Jong Frenkie, which went the other way. In the Ajax He didn't have to run that much and since his first week he had to hire a personal trainer to support the workload.

On the other hand, they also ensure that although not publicly, a member of the Barça club acknowledged that the responsibility in that chain of injuries was of the Catalan team but that they were not ready to assume it publicly. Even a club executive would have contacted his counterpart in Dortmund to try to understand the reasons for those in Germany I had no muscle problems and in Barcelona I did.

The text of the French newspaper ends with more statements by Michel Torin (worked with him at Rennes), in which he blames Barcelona for his current state of health: “Ousmane is not responsible for his situation. He is the victim of an early talent. In Rennes we had enormous pressure on training and matches, only we didn't kill him. If you see the photos, his bone development was not over, he had to grow. There was a rush to make him play because it is a phenomenon and he is paying for it. It is clear that he played too much. “ Next season, Ousmane Dembélé will have another opportunity to be that explosive extreme for which Barça paid 145 million euros.