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 previous seasons with the Camp Nou club.
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It was fewer than three months ago that Barcelona asked him to find a new club in the January transfer market. It was on Feb. 7 (when Dembele didn't even play in the 4-2 home win over Atletico Madrid) that Xavi had to beg the fans: "Please don't whistle and boo Ousmane. I understand that there are fans who are angry and hurt, but now that the market is closed, we can't shoot ourselves in the foot. He's back in our squad and available for selection."
The reference was to the fact that Dembele's agent and advisers were making it very tough indeed for Barcelona to renew his contract, which ends in June, on reasonable terms. The 24-year-old was already marked as a "failure" by big sections of that club's fan base and the booing/jeering during the Atleti win was merely when Dembele's name was read out by the stadium announcer and when he trotted out to warm up.
That was just two months ago.
Wouldn't you imagine that when Xavi asks, Xavi gets? Not only is he one of the best, most successful footballers in the club's 123-year history, but he's beloved and occupies the elevated position of "saviour" as their manager. So, the fans obeyed -- right?
Wrong. A mere 10 days later, the ear-piercing whistling was startling when Dembele came on against Napoli after an hour, the Blaugrana desperately seeking a winner to take to Southern Italy. With a couple of thousand Neapolitans and a handful of neutrals in the 73,000+ crowd, it felt like 70,000 Barcelona fans were combining to say "get out of our team!"
It rattled the senses of a neutral onlooker; to be the object of that must be a pitiful experience. However, Dembele played brilliantly, nearly turning the match and, gradually, reducing the vituperative volume. "That's it now, you've whistled him: you didn't listen to what I asked you. But that's enough," were Xavi's postmatch words, at which point a magical catharsis took place.
The crowd, on the manager's say-so and nothing more, decided to give Dembele a second chance. Simultaneously, the Normandy-born prodigy decided to take that chance with both hands and, being ambidextrous, both feet too.
