Ousmane Dembele has said he missed Borussia Dortmund training to get a move to Barcelona forcefully as he knew he would regret missing out on the chance to join one of the biggest clubs in the world.
Dembele was suspended by BvB and reportedly fined by Dortmund last month after missing training with the club in an attempt to demand a switch to Barca.
“I was relaxed. It was a question of negotiation between Barca and Borussia,” Dembele told Sport. “I knew I had to have patience.
“I decided to stop going training. I didn’t want to go. I looked for an excuse not to go.
“If it didn’t work out and I hadn’t done my part to get the move to Barca, now I would be lamenting the fact I wasn’t here.”
“I wanted to learn, play Champions League games, know what that competition was, to play a whole season with a big team, playing regularly, developing,” he said.
“[At Barca] I would have learned a lot in training but it would have halted my progression. Luckily Barcelona have come back for a second time and this time I could not let the train pass.”
Dembele says he started supporting Barcelona at the age of eight and it was during a Champions League game against Arsenal in 2010 that he was first really made aware of the brilliance of Lionel Messi.
“Barcelona had not done great in the first leg but in the second leg they produced a brilliant performance, with four goals from Messi — that’s when I realised Messi’s not from this world. It was incredible,” Dembele said. “Messi always plays at a sublime level. He’s the best player in history.”
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