Dembélé will leave Barça in the same way that he arrived from Dortmund six seasons ago. Nobody understood that Bartomeu paid 105 million plus 40 of variables for that player that the club assured was better for the team than Mbappé -most of the purchases from that board were well above the market price-, and it is difficult to explain now that he is going to Paris for a “mandatory transfer” contract that is another formula for Laporta’s survival economy – the miracle of bread and fish, according to his followers; or bread for today, hunger for tomorrow, according to the thesis of critics of the Barça board.
Conventionality is at odds with Dembélé. Who can take seriously a character who seems to be the protagonist of a comic, or a fictional movie, managed by a diabolic agent and in permanent conflict with the clubs in which he has played such as Rennes, Borussia Dortmund and Barcelona? This explains why his defenders have been above all followers who liked to be contrary or fans who boasted of knowing more about football than anyone else, understanding that they were waiting for Dembélé to become the Vinicius of Barcelona over time.
The dribbling of the French winger was the differential factor of a team that builds the game from the pass since Xavi and Iniesta were canonized. It is not that he evoked Garrincha, nor Neymar and even less Ronaldinho. Some of his moves, however, invited us to dream while they were not finished and allowed us to sue those who only attend to productivity and profitability, nothing to do with the intentionality patented with Lo Pelat. The ambidextrous condition made it impossible to know if Dembélé would come out on the right or left, if he would cross or shoot, if he would score or get injured, cursed since that heel shot with which he appeared in Getafe.
The beauty of football lies in its uncertainty and Dembélé, in addition to being incorrigible, unruly and unattainable, was unpredictable, a different striker in a football full of repeat players, impressive athletes, methods and programs and also artificial intelligence, tactical indifference and of a sophistication that often distances itself from the game and tends precisely to a misunderstood predictability, one that also does not know how to qualify Mahrez’s controls at City, his ability to kill the ball when he flew like a woodcock, today also captured by the hawks of Saudi Arabia.
Indecipherable on the pitch and on the street, Dembélé ended up dribbling past Xavi and exhausting Barça’s patience. He no longer had a tour in Barcelona and no one would have come to his defense in the stands of Montjuïc. Barcelona fans feel the need to once and for all close that business that has led the club to ruin since it wasted the 222 million that PSG paid for Neymar. There is no longer a trace of Coutinho, nor of Griezmann and soon of Dembélé. Something similar happened with Figo until Ronaldinho arrived. Now, however, there is no money and it is not known if there are levers to be mortgaged, so we will have to trust Abde, Yamal or Fermín.
The quarry was always the best and the only solution to times of crisis in Barcelona. Nothing holds back Dembélé anymore, who was never a reliable or team player, already on his way to PSG, Neymar’s team too. The majority of Barcelona fans will remember Dembélé for the non-goal against Liverpool, that failed shot at an empty goal that would have made it 4-0 and not the 3-0 that was traced back at Anfield, while a minority will continue to dream that the French striker will finish for scoring that impossible goal that they have sung so many times without the ball even kissing the net; what they did not count is that that goal could be in the goal of his Barcelona.
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