Ousmane Dembélé left FC Barcelona this past summer, and every month, there appears to be a new story surrounding his departure. Cadena Ser journalist Santi Ovalle revealed a few nuggets regarding the exit.
One of them was revealing the reason why the winger decided to leave the Catalan side. Spanish journalist Santi Ovalle noted that no new contract for the 2018 FIFA World Cup winner was on the table.
If the information is accurate, it might make sense why the winger decided to close the chapter with Barcelona and return to France. However, there’s another aspect for the Frenchman to decide that this year was the right time to leave the Spanish side.
Did a conflict of interest cause Ousmane Dembélé to leave?
Speaking to Cadena Ser, Ovalle explained that Deco’s relationship with Raphinha, who was Dembélé’s competition at Barcelona, would have been another reason for the exit. Deco was Raphinha’s before taking the sporting director role with the La Liga side.
“They convinced him by telling him how he could compete on equal terms against a winger whose representative is the sporting director,” Ovalle said (h/t Le10Sport).
“One of the things that weighed enormously on Dembélé’s mind when it came to making the decision to leave was that he was told, ‘How are you going to play? How are they going to treat you, or how are they going to extend your contract if the sporting director who is going to extend your contract was the representative of your direct competitor a month ago?'”
