Leeds United forward Patrick Bamford has revealed to the club’s official podcast that Barcelona star Ousmane Dembele is a “massive fan” of the the Yorkshire side.
Bamford was speaking about Ilan Meslier, who’s currently away with the French U21 team for their European Championship.
He said that Meslier asked for Bamford and Kalvin Phillips’ shirts after their match with Fulham for Dembele, who had requested them.
Dembele, currently away on international duty with the senior French national team, apparently watches “every” Leeds game.
“After the Fulham game he was like ‘I need your shirt please'”, Bamford said in the podcast in comments carried by CaughtOffside. “I said ‘yeah, it’s fine. Who for?’ He said ‘Ah, Dembele’. I said ‘wait, who?’. He said ‘the guy from Barcelona’.
“I was like ‘what, he wants my shirt?’ and he was like ‘yeah, he wants yours and Kalvin’s shirts because he’s a massive fan of Leeds and watches every game’.
“I was like ‘you serious?’ and I said ‘okay, but you’ve got to get me his shirt then in return’, so he FaceTimed me at midnight the other day and showed me this Barcelona shirt that says ‘to my bro Bamford, from Dembele'”.
Dembele‘s emergence as one of Barcelona‘s key forward players has been a welcome revelation for Ronald Koeman. The French winger is in the best run of form he’s had in Blaugrana, staying fit and doing damage.
Dembele’s Camp Nou career has been dogged by injury, with persistent disruptions hampering his pursuit of hitting the same level he showed at Borussia Dortmund. Now he’s getting there, helped by an evident love for the game.
