Dembele, money, acrimony and what to believe when the answer is nothing
Ousmane Dembele is leaving FC Barcelona. Maybe. Or maybe he’s staying. He’s asked for eleventy bajillion Euros and a pony. Maybe.
People are falling for it all, every last little rumor, reacting to it all, viewed through a prism of a media creation. What do we know about Dembele, except for his transfer fee? Folks didn’t even know he had a girlfriend, much less one that he was connected to enough to get married.
Ah. We know what a breathless journalist says his “entourage” has revealed. We know he’s made of glass. We know his injuries are his fault. We know that he isn’t a professional, isn’t serious about football. We know all of this, why? Because the whisper stream told us. We even know that he was the only Barça player to come back from vacation with COVID, apparently. We know he doesn’t eat right. We know he stays up late playing video games. We know that he’s late for practice all the time. We know. We know. How? Because people have told us this. All of it.
In truth, we don’t know anything except that he came to a dream club that turned into a nightmare. We know a backheel blew apart his hamstring, and club physios sent him off for surgery. Then he broke again. And again. Once he came back from Qatar looking like a bodybuilder — and didn’t even survive training before he broke again. He went to his national team and suffered a knee injury. Came back from that, and broke again.
With most players, it’s “Oh, poor guy can’t catch a break.” With Dembele, it’s “Just cut him loose on a free. Eff that dude. Sick of his injuries.” Well, now he’s purportedly leaving on a free, amid rumors, nonsense and a supporter base that views him with blinders on, blinders of the creation that has been presented to them. And folks are mad. The same outfit that said he was going to renew with a substantial salary reduction also said that he was demanding 40m per season, and 20m for his agent. Fly on the wall?
Every difficult salary negotiation at FC Barcelona follows the same path, and we watch that path unwind like a game of public Candyland that always ends with, “Greedy bugger wants more than the club is willing to pay.” And supporters line up to say, “Yeah!” Like it’s their money. Like it’s any of our money.
What else do we know about Dembele, aside from that his injuries have been mishandled? And yes, they have been. We know that he played a full season last year with only a minor hamstring niggle. We know that when Xavi got him back, fit, XaviBall took off like a rocket as his manager gave him the playmaker’s role that approximated what he had at Dortmund. Club that wants to renew him, manager who has plans for him, everything was right, but was it? Apparently not.
Because we also know about racist abuse on social media that came about as an image of a player carefully crafted. We know he’s done unprofessional things like oversleeping once (rather than habitually as legend has it.) And a stupid thing like being part of racist situation. We know he’s been late for training. Have other players? Ah. We don’t know that. But we know Dembele has. It’s weird how much we know about a player who doesn’t talk that much. Few quotes, few interviews. So where is all of this information coming from? If we don’t ask questions about it all, what are we doing?
And now, at what might be the end, what goodwill is a player supposed to have, what delight might he take in renewing with a club, putting out effort week after week for a fanbase that has never understood his game, even as intermittently as he’s been able to play it? About the same goodwill that any of us would have, which is zero.
He might still renew, might find that those other offers aren’t as attractive as the one made by the club that signed him, the same club that — again, rumor has it — will banish him to the stands if he doesn’t renew.
Dembele is a player, like any player, who feels the pressure of time in a career that even in normal fullness is over in the blink of an eye. A player is 35, and pretty much done. Better have saved up that dosh. What if they take a wrong step, like Victor Valdes, and it ends even more abruptly? Better have saved up that dosh. Players are mercenaries who usually offer their services to the highest bidder, facilitated by their agents.
Araujo isn’t done. Why? Money. Gavi isn’t done. Why? Money. And on it goes. Play for pay is a real thing, and any player would be crazy if they didn’t try to maximize their earning potential. Dependent upon who the player is, we either like it or not. But usually supporters side with the club, which is weird, right? We don’t empathize with our employers during labor actions or strikes. Nopenopenopenope. We’re bereft of empathy when we seek a pay rise and are shot down. But the tribal nature of football makes all of that fake money our money, and we begrudge every Euro of it when it comes to players we don’t rate.
Statistics come out that Dembele has only played x percent of his possible matches while at FC Barcelona. And nobody talks about physios. About different physiologies of pure sprinters and how clubs need to learn about those bodies when they get one of those rarities. Nobody. We talk about how he hasn’t “earned” his money.
This isn’t an argument for anything except logic, a bit of common sense and understanding what we know. And what we don’t know. Stop seeing players through a window created by other people with agendas in a world where everybody has one. Clubs, players, media outlets, agents, everybody. Hell, Dembele might well have demanded 40m per. It would be batshit crazy, but hey, why not? Go for it.
Or maybe if the rumor is real, it’s a demand he knows the club won’t meet and player and agent know it. And people ask, “Why did he jerk the club around all this time?” Did he? Dunno. But what if he did? All’s fair in love, war and money.
Football is an ugly, corrupt thing ruled by money, and everybody wants as much as they can get. Dembele can ask for whatever he wants, and the club can tell him to get stuffed. And the club is well-situated to tell him to go get stuffed. Ferran Torres just came, Abde is sparkling, Ilias is looking close to being ready. Fati is back, Depay is as well, and Braithwaite is training on the ball. That all of them combined just barely make up the talent and potential possessed in a willowy, fragile Frenchman (at least after he came to Catalunya) is beyond the point. The club can make do. And it’s time for him to leave. It’s best for club and player, best for everyone.
The real question is what do we know, and what do we believe? Dembele’s contract situation is noise that the team doesn’t need right now. However it gets sorted, it needs to be soon. Sending him to the stands would certainly send a message — but probably not the message the club is most interested in sending. It would also be messy at a time when nothing should be at all so. It’s frustrating, like so much about the player, right down to the post that his shot, a potential match winner against Sevilla, bounded off. His talent is like that friend who always shows up late. You’re excited, but then they show up and … Then one day you get tired of waiting. Looks like that day has come for player and club.
Ultimately, Dembele is a failure. Of transfer policy, of physios, of players making a move before they were quite ready, of having too much money in your pocket and other clubs knowing that. He’s a failure of hope, of ambition, of tactics. Every player wants nothing more than to rise or fall according to their talent, and what they can do with that talent. The worst part about Dembele isn’t that he’s a failure, but that he didn’t have the opportunity to make it on his talent. His body let him down, time and again, and we pounced, time and again. We never felt anything except the transfer fee, the goals we wanted to see from a player who was never a goalscorer.
He might still stay. He’s crazy if he does and the club would be crazy to keep him, but players and clubs have done crazy things in the past. Laporta would grin at the signing ceremony and all would be forgotten. And we still would know about as much about it all as we do now, which is nothing.