Ousmane Dembélé: A season without injuries, but also without productivity

Ousmane Dembélé left Barcelona after 6 years in the summer. He joined the rebounding team in his native France, PSG. Together with Kylian Mbappé, he was supposed to pull the team’s offense, but his productivity has been lacking. However, if anyone was worried about frequent injuries, the winger proved the doubters wrong.

Dembélé at Barcelona

In 2017, the French winger cost Barcelona 135 million euros. In retrospect, we can safely say that it was one of many bad not only financial moves by the former management of the Catalan club. The 20-year-old had one season at Dortmund at the time with a record of 10 goals and 21 assists. He forced his way to Spain with the management.

His first season in Spain he played only 24 games with a record of 4+9 (goals + assists). In the previous season for Dortmund he didn’t miss a single game and was injured for 10 days. After the transfer he missed 31 games! And here we come to the problem of the matter. Dembélé was more injured in Barcelona than on the pitch.

If we go season by season, the Frenchman has missed 18, 40, 27, 8 and 19 games respectively. In 6 years, the then-promising winger hadn’t featured in 143 games due to injury!

Kevin – Prince Boateng talked in one of the podcasts about how the young players at Barcelona maybe looked up too much to Messi, who didn’t train at such a high pace, and that’s probably why they were injured so much.

Dembélé played 185 games for Barcelona, the greater half of all possible games at the time. He has 40 goals and 43 assists to his credit. Fans will probably never forgive him for the botched finish against Liverpool in the Champions League semi-final, which cost Barcelona promotion after all.

Injuries in Paris

If you had told Barcelona fans, or perhaps even Paris fans, before the start of the season that Dembélé wouldn’t suffer any injuries until early April, they would have laughed at you. But the opposite is true. To date, the French winger has not suffered a single injury. He only misses games because of yellow cards, as if to tell his body that he’s had enough injuries.

Dembélé in Paris

Dembélé cost Paris 50 million euros. He has already appeared in 33 matches, but has only one goal to his credit. On November 24, the Frenchman opened his scoring account in his new position against Monaco, but he still hasn’t extended the account. Fans probably expected Dembélé to help Mbappé with the offensive, but the star striker is on his own.

The fact that Dembélé doesn’t have the necessary productivity won’t be saved by 13 assists. As the season approaches its final stretch and PSG is still struggling in the Champions League, if it wants to think about success Dembélé should start to be more productive.

Towards a nomination for the upcoming EURO, however, he probably doesn’t need to worry as he is a player that Deschamps regularly nominates no matter what.

Source: Transfermarkt