The bad injury news just keeps on coming for Barcelona as Ousmane Dembele will be out for six months following hamstring surgery.
After injuring himself in their UEFA Champions League clash with his former club Borussia Dortmund in late November, Dembele, 22, suffered a serious setback in training last week as he severely damaged his right hamstring.
This caps off a pretty miserable two-and-a-half years for him since he left Dortmund for Barca in a $115 million move to replace Neymar.
The World Cup winner, who will now surely miss EURO 2020 this summer, has been struck by injury on multiple occasions in recent months and he has yet to convince Barca’s fans and pundits that he is capable of delivering the goals and assists the Catalan club need him to on a regular basis.
Here is the statement in full from Barcelona on Dembele’s surgery and the plan for his recovery.
“Ousmane Dembele has successfully undergone surgery in Turku, Finland where he was operated on by Dr. Lasse Lempainen for a ruptured tendon in his proximal hamstring in his right thigh. The Frenchman will be out for around 6 months. The striker was continuing his recovery from the hamstring injury when he was forced to retire from a training session at the Ciutat Esportiva last week. Subsequent tests confirmed a complete rupture to the tendon in the proximal hamstring of his right leg.”
With Luis Suarez out injured until May after undergoing knee surgery, Barcelona will now have to rely on Antoine Griezmann, 17-year-old Ansu Fati and little ol’ Lionel Messi to score their goals to launch them to La Liga and Champions League glory in the final months of the season.
That sound you can hear is the collective soccer world warming up the world’s smallest violin...
Dembele has shown flashes of brilliance at Barca and has won two La Liga titles but he hasn’t been able to replace Neymar which was a big ask and has scored 19 goals in 74 appearances in all competitions and just once in nine outings this season. Let’s not forget, Dembele is only 22 years old and has a huge price tag on his head which will not be easy to handle.
He will now have some time out of the spotlight and maybe that will do him good in the long run as the constant critique of his performance will stop but those labelling him an injury prone mistake will now have further fuel to add to the fire.