Ousmane Dembele His eyes widen when he doesn’t want to say anything. As if that look, apparently clueless, even absent, was a refuge from where he schemed freely without anyone bothering him. Not so long ago, in a game in which nothing had gone as he would have wanted, he found that his name was written on the locker room blackboard. That meant he had to be the one to attend to the media. But, before the turn came, without anyone noticing, he deleted his name. Robert Lewandowski, who knows him well, was not fooled. That trick was not the work of the Holy Spirit. She winked at him, but told him that he had better do what he had to do.
Understanding Dembélé was always as complicated as deciphering if a dribble would go well or badly, if the defender would take the ball from him just by putting his foot or he would fall on his ass before the cut, if for once he would think for a couple of seconds and stop to look and cross, or if the shot would end up in the net, in the goalkeeper’s belly or in Cuenca.
Dembélé’s great decision: Barça is exposed to losing him
Among all the scenes that Dembélé leaves, the man who began his career in the Barça splitting in two because of a mistimed heel strike, whoever writes will not forget a specific episode. Although history will always point to Ernesto Valverde for the collapse at Anfield (4-0), memory was much more compassionate with Dembélé. It was he who could have erased all hope of a comeback for Liverpool when, in the first leg of that stormy Champions League semifinal, he had 4-0 in his boots. Messi had passed the ball to him and he stood still, waiting for the Frenchman to finish the job. But Dembélé kicked as if he did it against a feather. And Messi, puzzled by what he had just seen, much more sad than angry, collapsed. Sure that this would be the beginning of a long descent into hell.
Of a surreal and indecipherable naturewatching him play for six seasons at the Camp Nou gave fans the strange pleasure of movies slasher. Between scares and viscera, one was willing to die of fear or grief, but always with a smile. And real football, not the one demanded by the competitiveness industry, is about that. To laugh at you weird guys who, being so creative, don’t even know if they are on their way to the masterpiece or the most crappy doodle.
Dembélé got married when nobody knew he had a partner. Dembélé had the lexicon of Valle Inclan when there were those who believed that he did not know how to speak. Dembélé renewed when the club itself, through the mouth of Mateu Alemany, had told him that he would never play for Barça again. And Dembélé, to no one’s surprise, is allowing himself to be charmed by PSG when Xavi believed that at the Camp Nou, now yes, he could be something like a leader.
But Dembélé was always a symmetrical footballer. With a part delivered to genius and the other, to ridicule.
2023-07-31 15:14:11
#Dembélés #life #genius #ridicule
