According to respected German outlet Kicker, Barcelona have transfer-listed Ousmane Dembélé with Liverpool a “serious option” behind frontrunners Bayern Munich, as reported by Diario Sport.
Barça are looking to potentially offload the 22-year-old – presumably to finance moves for Antoine Griezmann and Neymar – and Dembélé has been on the lips of Jürgen Klopp before.
😂 Jurgen Klopp’s reaction when asked about whether Liverpool will be signing Ousmane Dembélé…
( 📹 @Newsflare )#LFC pic.twitter.com/MxAUXpdW2H
— The Sportsman (@TheSportsman) May 7, 2018
That said, any idea that the boss would go after a player who trashed his house in Dortmund remains up in the air – it would still take a princely sum to bring him to Anfield; a lot more, in fact, than the figures being thrown around for Nicolas Pépé.
Dembélé arrived at Camp Nou from Klopp’s prior employers, Borussia Dortmund, for €105m (plus €40m in add-ons) as Neymar’s replacement.
Without selling one of their stars, the Catalan club will be staring at a deficit of over €100m at the end of the transfer window, which would be in contravention of FIFA rules.
PSG could still offer Neymar as part of the deal to bring Dembélé the other way, though the report claims Barça would rather do a straight cash deal.
Bayern are still on the hunt for a winger after the departures of Arjen Robben and Franck Ribéry, plus their frustrated attempts to lure Leroy Sané away from Manchester City. Diario Sport also claim the young attacker could be open to a Bundesliga return, which might be read as a come-get-me plea.
Re: Dembélé-Liverpool. The article linking him to Liverpool by Kicker, who’re usually reliable, briefly mentions it in a Bayern article citing: “At the moment Dembélé gets offered to several clubs, like Liverpool”. About one sentence about Dembélé Liverpool.
— Maxi (@MaaxiAngelo) July 1, 2019
Liverpool are not actually mentioned in the second piece about Bayern’s failed bid, so it could be that the Reds were only linked owing to Klopp’s apparent previous interest.
In his single season for Dortmund, 10 goals and 22 assists in all competitions was enough to convince Barça to shell out for the young winger. At the La Liga side, a plague of injuries has limited Dembélé to only 65 total appearances across his two seasons, scoring 18 goals.
Equally, in our Champions League semi-final meeting with the Blaugrana, the France winger missed a sitter and then missed the miraculous fightback at Anfield through injury.
Were he to arrive on Merseyside for huge amounts of money, he would need to be counted on to come off the bench, start in the event of any absences for Sadio Mané or Mohamed Salah, and competitively push our front three – with his injury record, could he be relied upon to do that?