Ousmane Dembele has thanked Barcelona following his move to Paris Saint-Germain.
The French international has been working on a deal to join the Parisians since last month after admitting his desire to leave Catalonia.
Despite Barcelona’s attempts to convince him to stay with the La Liga champions, he has accepted the move, and will now begin a new chapter in his native country.
✍️ Ousmane Dembélé rejoint le Paris Saint-Germain en provenance du FC Barcelone. Le champion du monde, qui portera le numéro 23, s’est engagé pour 5 saisons.#WelcomeDembélé
— Paris Saint-Germain (@PSG_inside) August 12, 2023
The 26-year-old winger has agreed a five-year contract at the Parc des Princes with PSG activating his €50m release clause at Barcelona as part of the negotiations.
Barcelona will now look to reinvest the money generated by Dembele’s sale into their squad but the former Borussia Dortmund star had a positive message on his departure.
“I did not want to leave without thanking all the people at Barcelona who have supported me during these years: colleagues, coaches, club workers and managers”, he posted on social media.
“I have grown as a footballer and as a person and it has been a pride and an honour to wear the ‘Blaugrana’ shirt. Without a doubt, I take with me memories that will always be in my heart.”
Dembele is not expected to feature for PSG in their opening fixture of the season today against Lorient.
Tired of Dembele already. He and his agent have been wanting the bag for three years now and creating way too much drama to be considered in any way professional. He should be honoured, and humbled as well, but I’m not buying that he is. The club babysat him through behaviour issues and constant injuries for six years and all he could manage was to hold the club hostage (twice) when contract time rolled around and demand about twice what he’s actually worth.
He got paid, which is what he wanted. Hopefully this is the last time we have to read about him.
Im agreed with your comment, and remember Xavi babysat him more than the Club. One of the things that I dont liked of the Coach.
Barcelona treated Dembele like a red-headed stepchild. It was obviously they did not respect his real injuries situation, and instead wanted to dump him, which he and his agent intelligently refused. When healthy he proved his skill and worth to the team and led them to the League championship. I am glad he left with class and in top form. Barcelona is known to take cheap shots at the players they no longer want. Johan Cruyff must be rolling over in his grave.
Nice revisionist history there. The facts:
He missed fully a third of all La Liga matches last season, and scored a grand total of five goals. He didn’t lead anyone anywhere.
Dembele was injured for six years. The club threatened disciplinary action more than once because he was constantly late for training and wasn’t taking care of himself the way a multimillion dollar professional athlete is supposed to (Think Neymar, but without the resume). They even assigned veteran players to keep an eye on him. After four years of this, his agent declared that Dembele was a future Ballon d’ Or winner and deserved to be paid like one. Not only did Barca find that to be preposterous, the rest of the football world did as well; he got no offers close to what he was demanding and had to sign back with Barca for two more years. This time around, he waited until less than a week before the beginning of the new season to announce that he was moving to PSG. That’s not “leaving with class”.
Unless you’re his mom, his wife or his agent, you should know better than to post nonsense like that.