Former Barcelona President Bartomeu claims Ousmane Dembele was signed over a potential megastar

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The transfer market is incredibly easy to get right in hindsight, but Barcelona have made so many horrible decisions in recent years that have now come back to bite them.

They slowly drifted away from their youth policy and moved towards a galactico approach where they threw a lot of money at players like Coutinho, Griezmann and Ousmane Dembele, but all three have flopped for differing reasons.

The Dembele transfer was the most interesting because he was still a rising star at the time rather than the finished article, while injuries have completely derailed him over the years and it doesn’t look like that potential is going to be fulfilled.

Teamtalk recently reported that he could leave Barca for free in January despite them paying almost £100m to sign him from Dortmund, but it gets worse after a report from AS looked at some comments from the previous President Josep Maria Bartomeu.

He’s claimed that Kylian Mbappe was a potential signing for them at that point but the scouts pushed hard for Dembele instead, and time has shown that it was the wrong call.

It’s worth noting that Dembele was signed at the end of the 16/17 season, so at that point, Mbappe had just finished his breakout year with Monaco – He was a rising star and very highly regarded, but he wasn’t quite the undisputed megastar that he is today.

Clearly Barca would make a different decision if they knew how things turned out, but AS have also reported that Mbappe is getting closer to a move to Real Madrid next summer, so that makes this even worse if he does go to Madrid and leads them to glory for years to come.

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