Rejuvenated Dembele back in favor with Barca

MADRID－It wasn't long ago that Ousmane Dembele was being jeered by Barcelona fans at Camp Nou.

He had just refused to leave the club after being told he wasn't wanted anymore.

There had been back-and-forth accusations, with Barcelona saying it only wanted fully committed players and Dembele saying he would not give in to blackmail.

The relationship appeared well beyond saving.

Fast forward a few weeks, though, and everyone is smiling again. The grievances are suddenly gone and peace has apparently been restored.

Dembele looks happy. He is playing well and scoring, and fans have been cheering instead of booing him.

The club again wants him to stay.

"He still has our offer," Barcelona president Joan Laporta told radio station SER.

"As I said before, I think he is an extraordinary player－one of the best in the world in his position. Hopefully he will rethink his decision at the end of the season."

Laporta, who in the past described Dembele as better than Kylian Mbappe, told the France forward to look for another club in January after he rejected a "very good offer" to extend his contract. The negotiations had been ongoing for several months ahead of the end of the contract this season.

Barcelona has been restructuring its finances and had to renegotiate the salaries of several of its players recently, reducing some of them, including veterans Gerard Pique and Sergio Busquets.

The 24-year-old Dembele didn't accept the financial terms to renew his contract, nor accept joining another club on loan despite "at least two good offers"－including from an English club－at the end of the winter transfer window.

Barcelona coach Xavi Hernandez left him out of the squad during the dispute but eventually decided to bring him back. Dembele stayed on the bench in the league match against Atletico Madrid at the beginning of February, when the crowd at Camp Nou voiced its discontent with the player by loudly booing him.

Xavi said Dembele kept acting professionally and eventually gave him more minutes, putting him back in the starting lineup in a 4-1 league win at Valencia.

A couple of matches later, Dembele scored his first goal since returning, a tough angled shot into the top of the net after getting past a defender inside the area in Barcelona's 4-0 rout of Athletic Bilbao.

He showed the kind of form that had convinced Barca to break its own transfer record to acquire him from Borussia Dortmund in 2017 in a deal worth up to 147 million euros (then $175 million).

Dembele was touted as the replacement for Neymar after the Brazilian transferred to Paris Saint-Germain, but he never met the expectations in part because of a series of injuries.

He is healthy again, though, delivering good performances and－more importantly－staying on good terms with the club, fans and Xavi.

"It's not up to me if he will stay or not, but I have to say that he has been working well," Xavi said. "I'll give him that."

Agencies via Xinhua