A change from Ousmane Dembele to FC Bayern Munich is apparently off the table. According to Josep Bartomeu, president of FC Barcelona, the French offensive man is not for sale.
“Dembele is young, talented and offers much more. We want him to stay with us, so we want to keep him,” Bartomeu said on Friday at a specially convened press conference in the run-up to the presentation of newcomer Frenkie de Jong.
A member of Dembeles’ consulting team had recently certified the Munich team “zero chances” to Sky with the former Dortmunder. Dembele, like Philippe Coutinho, is “indispensable for our project”, Bartomeu now confirmed.
The two offensive players, who had only been hired in 2017 for a total of over 220 million euros, had recently been the subject of numerous speculations about changes. While Bayern Dembele looked for a successor to Franck Ribery and Arjen Robben as an alternative to Leroy Sane (Manchester City) and Callum Hudson-Odoi (Chelsea FC), Coutinho was associated with top English and Italian clubs.
The Spanish press said Barca would have to give up the two stars to finance a recall from Neymar. However, Bartomeu confirmed on Friday that there were no internal discussions about the Brazilian’s comeback at Camp Nou.
“I don’t like to talk about players from other clubs. We know Neymar wants to leave PSG, but we also know PSG doesn’t want to leave him,” said the 56-year-old. Apart from that, Dembele was “better” than Neymar anyway.
Bartomeu also confirmed that Barca was on the verge of hiring another Frenchman: Antoine Griezmann. They met with representatives of Atletico Madrid on Thursday for talks in the Spanish capital. Griezmann’s exit clause is 120 million euros, the 28-year-old goal scorer had already announced his departure from Atletico in May.
Bartomeu, on the other hand, says that the Blaugrana are out of the race to win Dutch defender Matthijs de Ligt. “I’ve known where he’s going for a few weeks, but that’s all I’m gonna say. The club that gets it has to announce this itself,” he said. According to information from SOCCERSCORE and Goal, de Ligt moves to the Italian champion Juventus Turin.
