L'Équipe accuse Barcelona of being responsible for Dembele's injuries

"This morning, like every morning, Ousmane Dembele will get up a little before 9am. He will have a light breakfast, prepared by his personal chef, Anthony, before starting his daily recovery work." 

That's how the L'Equipe article by Hugo Guillemet which looks into Dembele's repeated injury problems starts. 

"Since his arrival, his personal hygiene has crossed with his health. The first, imperfect for a long time, has not stopped improving while the second is in freefall. Therefore, you have to find other reasons than late-night PlayStation sessions to explain the multiple serious muscle injuries. 

"Injured on Feb. 4, he has said goodbye to the season and his Euro 2022 dream. People close to him describe him as positive, motivated and more determined than ever to succeed at Barcelona." 

The article tried to look at his continued injury issues when before he arrived in Catalonia "he was never injured." 

It remembers how his first injury arrived just after signing for Barcelona when he'd been on strike from Borussia Dortmund training. In Germany, "they don't see any objective reason why he's injured more in Spain than the Ruhr, where he played intense games in the Bundesliga, where he was close to coach Tuchel, who he spoke with a lot about his recovery." 

In Barcelona, he lives with his best friend Moustapha Diatta (who serves as the contact with the club) and his uncle. "Internal sources at the club assure that Dembele's private life, supposedly bad, is many times exaggerated, despite an acknowledgment that his first season was not ideal." 

The player didn't have problems admitting that at the end of his first campaign in a meeting with staff. His entourage restructured things to leave nothing to chance. Moussa Sissoko, his agent that lives in London, has spent a lot of time in Barcelona to be close to Dembele. 

“In his house, there's no prepared drinks, no soda, there are only fresh and healthy things," explains Anthony. "Ousmane is very good at football and he thought that was enough. But he has grown and he understands. Now, he eats fish, chicken and lots of lentils. It is hard to see the bad luck he has had with injuries because he looks after himself. He's a kid that likes to be at home, he never has parties. He has fixed meal times which he asked me to sort. There's planning at home, everything written down, everything professional." 

Dembele, according to the report, has changed Coca-Cola for juices in the morning -- pineapple or pair -- and has improved his sleep a lot. 

"But all players of Generation Z go to bed late," says a regular at Clairefontaine. "at 12am, 1am, it's early for them and it's not just Ousmane because others like Benjamin (Mendy), Lucas (Hernández), Kylian (Mbappe) are the same… You can't expect Dembele and Hugo Lloris to have similar entourages. Ousmane is aware of all that, it's just that his muscle-building doesn't respond..." 

Why does he get hurt at Barça? That's the question. And the answer? "The physiological profile of Dembele, combined with Barça's way of training, is one of the key factors. Being explosive and quick demands the muscle of a sprinter. While the training at Barcelona doesn't prepare you for that nor the prevention of eventual injuries. The result is that 90 percent of the runs he does are sprints (in games) while in training it's just 20 percent. There's no consistency between the demand in matches and training. In addition, you also have to have in mind the athletic criteria of the players. There are club cultures that don't correspond with the needs of the players." 

In this sense, they explain that Barcelona train at the rhythm of Pique, Busquets and Messi, the veterans in the dressing room. 

"According to club sources, Frenkie de Jong took on a personal trainer weeks after his arrival when he realised the workload in training didn't correspond with his experience at Ajax," L'Équipe adds. 

The article also explains that in a meeting this autumn between medical staff and Dembele, some board members recognised the Catalan club's responsibility in the Frenchman's chain of injuries. According to the French paper, recently someone at the club called their counterpart at Dortmund to try and find out why the player never got injured in Germany.