Messi983
Senior Member
Re-sign him now. He is clearly our best winger, we need to keep him.
He is but I have two concerns that the club should seriously consider before renewing him.
1. can he become less hot and cold and also start to perform on a consistently good level against top teams as well? Which is what is needed if we want to build the team around his strenghts in coming years. Can he be one of the leader of a team that will (hopefully) become competitive in Europe again in not so distant future. He'll probably want to be paid as a top 5 player in the world which he can be on his days but can/will he keep up that level through a whole season and against better opponents?
2. while I believe his mentality changed under Xavi part of me is still affraid he'll turn back to his old self being injured for 5-6 months every season as soon as he'll get a new 4-5 year contract. I think shorter term contract might keep him more motivated. So I'd prefer to give him another 2-year contract with club option for third season rather than extend him till 2027/28.
It's clear Xavi loves Dembouz and will do everything to keep him but where is that point in contract negotiations when Laporta/club will decide they prefer to get 50m and see who they can sign to replace Dembele rather than pay him 30m/season and risk to again ruin wage structure at the club that they are still working to repair. He's important but Barca is in no position to give him everything he wants like PSG did with Mbappe for example.
It's 100m with Dembele receiving 50%. But Barcelona receive a min of 50m of any transfer. So If Dembele wanted to go to PSG (example) and they agreed 70m, thenBarca take 50m and Dembele 20m.
Remember the buyout clause is technically Dembele buying out his own contract. So he would be foregoing a % of what he pays himself. In layman terms.
In this case it would be the same for Barca if we'd sell him for 50m or 100m. If he'd upset the club for some reason and we'd want to offload him we could just say to other clubs "give us 50m and you can have him" while at the same time also f*** Dembele not giving him any money from the transfer. Don't see why Sissoko would accept such clause.