Ousmane Dembele must leave before January end: Barcelona's Director of Football

Mateu Alemany, Barcelona’s director of football, stated that Ousmane Dembele must leave the club by the end of January after the French international made it plain that he does not want to stay. Dembele, who signed for 140 million euros from Borussia Dortmund in 2017, will be free to leave when his contract expires in the summer. Barca have been desperate to stop that occurring, and with debts of over a billion euros, if he is sold in the current transfer window, they will at least be able to collect a fee for the 24-year-old.

“With Ousmane and his agent we began conversations around July so it’s been six months and a bit,” Alemany said on Thursday. “We’ve talked, we’ve talked, we’ve talked. Barca has made different offers. We’ve tried to find a way for the player to continue with us but these offers have been systematically rejected by his agents and today, January 20, eleven days before the last period of his contract ends, it seems obvious to us that the player does not want to continue at Barcelona and he is not committed to Barca’s future project.”

“In this scenario he and his agents have been informed that he must leave immediately because we want players committed to this project and therefore we hope that a transfer will take place before January 31,” Barcelona’s director of football.

‘Don’t want players that aren’t committed’

Dembele has been left out of Xavi Hernandez’s squad for the Copa del Rey last 16 match against Athletic Bilbao on Thursday night. “The sporting consequence of all this, as agreed by our coach, is that we do not want to have players who are not committed to the project and who do not want to be at Barca,” Alemany said.

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“The club is obviously not the one that should decide this, it is the coach, and he has decided it. But he has all our support and we understand it perfectly. It seems to us absolutely the correct approach.”

In recent years, Dembele has been plagued by injuries and has generally been a disappointment at Camp Nou. Despite his several setbacks, Barca has been desperate to keep Dembele, who remains one of the club’s most gifted players despite his numerous setbacks.