Dembele, Barcelona, excess and falling upwards to PSG

Barcelona made Ousmane Dembele the second most expensive signing in the world three months after his 20th birthday, and their drifting relationship speaks volumes for football’s excesses.

Whatever it was supposed to be, it almost certainly wasn’t supposed to end like this. With just hours to play in the January 2021 transfer window, the unfortunate saga of Ousmane Dembele is reaching the end of another chapter and it’s still not clear how it’s going to end, although there remains the likelihood that football’s propensity for some to fall upwards may yet mean that he ends up in Paris as part of their footballer accumulation project.

It’s all a long way removed from the summer of 2017, when Dembele arrived in Barcelona from Borussia Dortmund, having just become the second most expensive player of all time, with the club splurging half the receipts of the highest transfer fee received of all-time on him – €105m, rising to €145m with add-ons. Upon his arrival at Camp Nou, he was promptly given the number 11 shirt previously worn by Neymar. No pressure, then, though it is also worth mentioning that Ousmane Dembele was just three months past his 20th birthday when all of this happened.

What happened next has become something of a parable for our times. An injury, caused by attempting a backheel in his first full appearance for Barcelona, kept him out for almost four months, and a second injury – a fortnight after his return – kept him out for another month. He scored his first goal against Chelsea in the Champions League and then won the World Cup in the summer of 2018 with France, but  since then the injuries have only become more persistent and his performances have tailed off. There was talk of issues with his diet and