Ousmane Dembele‘s transfer saga seems to finally come to an end The French winger finally signed a 2-year contract with Catalan giants Barcelona. Dembele’s saga started in January 2022 with just 6 months remaining on his contract. Dembele’s agent Moussa Sissako wanted a more lucrative contract for his client and thus Dembele rejected all the offers of renewal from Barcelona but now has accepted one.
The Dembele saga dragged on for months and Dembele and his agent was adamant about their demands while the Barcelona board didn’t want to risk giving him a huge contract after looking at his injury record. Barcelona President Joan Laporta came out in public and said, “if a player doesn’t want to play for Barcelona and only wants more money then we can’t help him“.
Months went on and nothing was ongoing, Dembele become a free agent after the current contract expired on 30th June 2022. It looked like Dembele will have a future away from Barcelona but as July 2022 came, things started to take U-turn rumours started to appear that Ousmane Dembele renewed his contract with Barcelona for 2 years deal. This contract will be performance-based and all the clauses and their bonuses will meet after the specific performance is completed by Dembele.
Now here in this article, we will look at 3 reasons for which Ousmane Dembele renewed with FC Barcelona.
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- The Xavi Effect
Dembele at Barca has always seen struggling be it injury or be it on the field. Dembele wasn’t utilised in its full capacity by previous Barca managers but with Xavi Hernandez, it has been completed different. Under Xavi, Dembele looked like a completely different player. He was seen as more involved in a team build-up and attack. Xavi brought the best out of Dembele and the Frenchmen recorded 13 assists and 4 goals in the second half of the last season. Xavi has always shown faith in Dembele and has repeated said Dembele has a bright future at Barcelona.
- Lack of offers
In spite of being said from Dembele camp that we have other offers on the table, nothing came in reality. They were only limited clubs interested in him. The only 2 clubs who came close to signing him were PSG and Chelsea. PSG has a strong interest in the French men but with the change of Management especially with the sporting director and their new manager Gaiter the interest died off and no official offer came from Paris. With respect to Chelsea, they were interested in him especially with Thomas Tuchel at helms ( Dembele former coach at Dortmund) but they moved on with it and went after Raheem Sterling and are very close to signing the English International.
- A Chance for Redemption of his Reputation
Dembele since joining Barcelona become famous for his unprofessional conduct and off the field behaviour. Dembele was often seeing violating rules laid down by the club. Dembele has struggled fitness-wise and been very underperforming over course of his 5 years stay at Barcelona.
The Frenchmen was often seeing reporting late for training sessions and might have also missed a few. He has shown some unprofessional behaviour back from days at Rennes and Borussia Dortmund and now even in the last 6 months during his contract renewal talks Barcelona fans have seen that. Now that he has no option but to renew with Barcelona he has a golden chance to redeem his Bad boy reputation and earn the trust and love of the Barcelona faithful.
