Rumour Mongering: Barcelona Make Final Dembele Decision

Ousmane Dembele is staying put. At least until tomorrow when the story will inevitably change again.

Yesterday, Barcelona were said to be offering Ousmane Dembele to Liverpool for a cool £90M, looking to help offset a summer of spending on big-name attackers who would likely have pushed the 22-year-old down the depth chart at the Camp Nou.

Today, they’re not offering him to anybody, with the new story out of Spain being that the Barca hierarchy has now met with Dembele’s representatives and that it has been agreed by all that he will remain with the defending La Liga champions.

Or at least that’s the claim in Marca today, with the Madrid-based outlet saying that Barcelona are determined to embrace a shift towards youth and as such Dembele has been assured that he will have a key role to play for them in the 2019-20 season.

Of course, in another story today Marca are pushing the idea that Barcelona are trying to figure out how to sign both Neymar and Antoine Griezmann—27 and 28 respectively—this summer, players into their prime years who would start ahead of Dembele.

How exactly he remains key to Barca’s plans if any of that is remotely true—and then how Barca manage to pay for those deals without selling one of their few players with real resale value—is a fair question to which there are no answers.

Mostly, it adds up to Barcelona looking a bit of a directionless mess right now, and whatever’s actually going on when it comes to them and Dembele and Liverpool, this probably won’t be the end of the rumours.

Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com