Ousmane Dembélé, during a game this season. /
Mercado
The Catalans will not raise their offer and will wait for the final decision of the French footballer, whose contract ends on June 30
Seven days. That is the time that Ousmane Dembélé has left as a Barcelona player. The French attacker experiences, less than a week before his contract expires, endless phone calls between which he must decide. Stay or pack, that is the question. The culés have already presented him with their last offer, the definitive one, and they are waiting for the soap opera they have suffered for months to end once and for all. The ball is now in the player’s court.
“If you want to stay you must accept the offer. If not, you have to go.” That’s how resounding Xavi Hernández was in the last conversation he had with Dembélé. The Tarrasa coach has never hidden his desire for the Frenchman to continue in the Barça squad and he has made it known to both the player and the board of directors chaired by Joan Laporta. That is the main reason why Barça still maintains the proposal that has been firm since the end of 2021. The club is committed to the continuity of the former Borussia Dortmund player and will maintain its offer until the final decision.
If Dembélé decides to stay at Barcelona, he will have to do so by accepting a significant salary reduction. Not even the famous levers that were activated last week have made the culé club raise an offer that for the player’s agent, Moussa Sissoko, is insufficient. Barça offered the footballer an amount close to eight million euros per season plus a bonus, figures that are already close to the ten ‘kilos’ that the player currently receives per course, but which are still far from what the great cracks charge worldwide, where Sissoko hopes to bring his client closer with his next contract.
Given this scenario, the auction has already begun and has three European giants such as Chelsea, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain waiting for the player’s decision. Londoners are the ones who start with an advantage. The ‘blues’ have Thomas Tuchel, the coach who got the best performance out of Dembélé at Borussia Dortmund, and offer the winger a project in which he can feel like a protagonist in one of the most important showcases in world football such as the Premier League. The entity that is now chaired by Bruce Buck, founder of a prestigious law firm, has been after the player for some time and only the indecision of the Mosquito could make them consider incorporating him.
The other two candidates remain in the rear. PSG was the team that was previously interested as a possible replacement in the face of a possible departure of Kylian Mbappé, something that ultimately did not occur and that has caused him to lose steam in the negotiations. Finally, Bayern is the club that can offer the footballer the most in the economic section and is looking for an attacker who can provide Julian Naggelsman’s team with that extra to fight for the Champions League again. If Dembélé would reunite with Tuchel at Chelsea, here he would do it with a Bundesliga that saw him grow and from which he left scoring ten goals and dishing out 20 assists in a single season.
Plan B, activated
Barça is aware that it cannot rely on all its options in this Dembélé à la carte transfer market and that is why it is working on the option of incorporating another footballer in case the Frenchman finally ends up leaving the club. Adama Traoré is already history, Trincao is not part of the club’s plans and the arrival of a winger is a priority. This is how Xavi has made it known and the club has already made a move to incorporate Raphinha, a 25-year-old Leeds player who scored eleven goals last year in the Premier League, and Ángel Di María, a cheaper option since his relationship ends with PSG on June 30 and would arrive free.
Lewandowski will not be sold for less than 50 million
Robert Lewandowski wants to play for Barcelona and the Barça club will not give up their efforts to sign the Polish striker, but the Bayern striker will not be transferred to the Barça club for less than 50 million euros. Barça intended to hire Lewandowski for a fixed 35 million euros plus five in variables, but Bayern has rejected the second offer from the culé entity, considering it insufficient for a footballer who has a contract until 2023 but is tightening the rope to become this summer new Barça player. Barça and Bayern are called to understand each other by Lewandowski once the Polish striker has reached a total agreement with the club chaired by Joan Laporta, although the sports director of the Bavarian entity, Hasan Salihamidzic, has come to state that «now Even the chance that Robert will stay is one hundred percent.” “Lewandowski has another year’s contract and will be welcome in Munich on July 12 for the first work session,” commented the former Bosnian soccer player, although he cannot close the door on his departure, since he does not hide that the scorer “has great goals in his career and his situation can be fixed.
Salihamidzic has acknowledged that the conversations held in Mallorca with Lewandowski himself and his representative, Pini Zahavi, “were positive.” Meanwhile, Bayern have signed Senegalese Sadio Mané as a likely replacement for the veteran Polish striker who will turn 34 in two months. The German club will pay Liverpool 41 million for Mané (32 fixed plus nine in variables) and, logically, wants to obtain more money for his great star. By not convincing Bayern with its new proposal, Barcelona will therefore be forced to pay more than it had planned. The former president of Bayern Uli Hoeness has also spoken about the ‘Lewandowski case’, who has launched an attack on Barcelona: «He wants to sign Lewandowski when he had a debt of 1,300 million six months ago. In Germany they would have already had to declare bankruptcy.
