Injuries, sleeping in for training and inconsistent performances have seen the youngster questioned, but the club are fully behind the French forward <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Barcelona president Josep Bartomeu has thrown his support behind Ousmane Dembele, stating that the club have ‘lots of trust’ in his talent despite inconsistent performances as the Catalan club prepares for life without Lionel Messi.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Messi, Barca’s all-time leading goalscorer, has been with the club since 2001, graduating from the club’s famed La Masia academy before going on to help the Spanish side to an incredible 34 trophies throughout his time in the first team.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old may not be showing any signs of slowing down in terms of his on-field contributions, but the time will eventually come when the Blaugrana can no longer count on their star man.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Barca have spent big in recent years as part of their post-Messi plans, bringing in the likes of Dembele, Antoine Griezmann and Frenkie de Jong, and Bartomeu feels that the foundations are in place for a new generation of winners despite a shaky start to the 2019-20 season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the next two or three seasons our leader will continue to be Leo Messi,\u201d the club supremo told The Associated Press. \u201cBut it’s true that there are other young players who are coming through \u2013 players coming from abroad, but also players coming from our La Masia.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very happy because we are preparing this post-Messi era. Messi’s contract finishes in 2021, but surely it will be the will of all parties involved \u2013 if he feels strong and still has the ambition \u2013 to extend his contract indefinitely.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always make a comparison with Pele. Pele was a man of a single club… I have no doubts that after Messi finishes his career as a footballer he will remain linked to this club for the rest of his life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dembele, signed as a replacement for Neymar, now at PSG,\u00a0has not enjoyed the best of starts to life at Camp Nou, with disciplinary issues and injury problems seeing his quality questioned due to a hefty transfer fee.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Bartomeu, however, insists that he has the full backing of the club as they strive to get the best out of a man who could go some way to filling a Messi-shaped hole in the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cArriving at Barca and triumphing isn’t easy,\u201d the president said of the French forward. \u201cCoutinho’s adaptation wasn’t so easy \u2013 he is a world-class star\u00a0but we opted for a loan to Bayern Munich this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cOusmane has had bad luck with injuries but we have lots of trust in his talent.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Injuries, sleeping in for training and inconsistent performances have seen the youngster questioned, but the club are fully behind the French forward Barcelona president Josep Bartomeu has thrown his support behind Ousmane Dembele, stating that the club have ‘lots of trust’ in his talent despite inconsistent performances as the Catalan club prepares for life without…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2508\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}