French newspaper L’Equipe has laid the blame for Ousmane Dembele’s multiple injuries at the door of Barcelona.
As outlined by Diario Sport, the reputable French sports newspaper has criticised how the club have handled Dembele’s physical conditioning while also critiquing the player’s own approach to his career.
The main argument is that Barcelona’s training programme is not physically preparing Dembele for matches – it uses data that in training, only 20% of his runs are sprints but in matches this figure is closer to 90%.
It is said that Sergio Busquets, Gerard Pique and Lionel Messi are dictating the pace of training sessions, meaning that the lower tempo is not in keeping with other players.
According to club sources, Frenkie De Jong started using a personal trainer a few weeks after his arrival when he realised that the workload in training did not correspond to his experience at Ajax.
This is said to be a large reason, alongside Dembele’s alleged lack of discipline with his diet away from training, that is leading to him sustaining multiple injuries at the Camp Nou having never previously suffered them.
The France international – who has been plagued by injuries since moving to the Camp Nou in the summer of 2017 – pulled up in the 25th minute of the clash against his former club Borussia Dortmund in late November and has not featured since.
Tests had confirmed Dembele had sustained a muscle injury in his right thigh and the 22-year-old was set to be out for a minimum of two months, and recently he has returned to first-team training.
Dembele has played only three full matches for the Spanish champions this season and has had to sit out earlier in the campaign due to a separate thigh injury.
