It says something remarkable that despite Pedri scoring an outrageously luscious winner against Sevilla and his coach, Xavi Hernandez, drenching the 19-year-old with adoring superlatives after the final whistle, Ousmane Dembele was, by a huge distance, Barcelona’s man of the match on Sunday night.
Bluntly put, the controversial, often difficult to comprehend (and previously injury prone), World Cup-winning France winger gave a textbook display not only of how to leave your opponents’ legs in a knotty twist, but of how to drive a title-hunting team to victory over a brilliantly organised and stubborn opponent.
Dembele set up big — and I mean mega-big — scoring chances for Frenkie de Jong, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Ferran Torres (three times), Ronald Araujo, Gerard Pique, bounced a shot about an inch over the bar and then gave that assist/pass for Pedri’s glorious winner. In case you’ve not seen the match, those chances almost all required good — or excellent — saves from Sevilla goalkeeper Alex Bono plus, in Pique’s case, led to a header off the crossbar. Then there were the appealing “extras.”
To be kind for a minute, Dembele has seemingly long been confused about what “tracking back” might mean and completely repulsed by the idea that defensive teamwork might possibly apply to him. No longer, it seems.
Throughout Sunday’s match, Dembele put in a decent shift to make sure that Dani Alves’ right-back position didn’t get swamped and then, in the second half, he barged two Sevilla opponents into touch while winning the ball to restart a Barcelona surge. Those moments brought a guttural roar of approval from the 76,000-strong crowd (average attendance this season: 52,000), meaning he’d conquered a rival far more stubborn and potentially threatening than auxiliary Sevilla left-back Karim Rekik.
The fact is, Dembele’s situation is one of the most remarkable turnarounds in a love-hate football relationship I can recall — never mind his controversial four…
Source : espn
