The manager of FC Barcelona, Ronald Koeman has insisted that the club’s 23-year-old right-winger, Ousmane Dembele, is an important player at the club despite having about 12 months left on his contract.
Ousmane Dembele renewed the faith Ronald Koeman has in him by scoring a late-minute goal to give FC Barcelona victory in the Spanish La Liga game against Real Valladolid on Monday, April 5, 2021.
The goal of the 23-year-old French forward ended the league game 1-0 and pushed Barcelona closer to the first placed Atletico Madrid on the league table.
After the game, Barcelona remained second on the league table with 65 points in 29 games, a point behind Atletico Madrid and two points above 3rd placed Real Madrid.
If Ousmane Dembele had not scored the goal in the 90th minute of the game and the game ended 0-0, FC Barcelona would have moved down to the 3rd spot while Real Madrid would have replaced them on the second spot.
The win has allowed Barcelona to keep challenging for the league title which could be the club’s biggest consolation for this season after crashing out of the UEFA Champions League in the round of 16.
Coach K pic.twitter.com/m9SwkxjQSr
— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) April 6, 2021
Based on the performance of Ousmane Dembele who has scored 5 goals and provided 2 assists in 23 La Liga games, coach Ronald Koeman declared the right-winger as an important player for Barcelona.
“I would like Dembele to stay, he is an important player for us,” Koeman said after Dembele scored a last-minute winner for FC Barcelona on Monday night.
“Today, he has shown that with his game and the goal. The key is that he has physically improved and has been able to play a lot of games in a row.”
Ousmane Dembele joined FC Barcelona from German Bundesliga side, Borussia Dortmund on August 25, 2017, for a transfer fee worth €135 million. Since then, the pacing winger has scored 29 goals and provided 20 assists in 110 games.
So far this season, the winger has managed to play 36 times in all competitions for Barcelona in which he scored 10 goals and provided 4 assists.
He is always criticized by some Barcelona fans due to how he frequently gets injured and how wasteful he could sometimes be in front of the goalpost.
Currently, strong speculations are linking him with a move out of Barcelona and reports claimed that the Spanish giants are not planning to extend his contract. However, as of the time of publishing this report, no club has made an official move for his signature.
𝑀𝐴𝑇𝐶𝐻 𝑅𝐸𝑃𝑂𝑅𝑇 : 𝐵𝐴𝑅𝐶̧𝐴 𝑊𝐼𝑁, 𝑇𝐼𝑇𝐿𝐸 𝑅𝐴𝐶𝐸 𝑇𝐼𝐺𝐻𝑇𝐸𝑁𝑆https://t.co/7FzJ7Mlvbx
— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) April 5, 2021
