PSG winger finally confirmed as one of Barcelona’s most expensive ever signings

FC Barcelona have finally paid off what they owed Borussia Dortmund for Ousmane Dembélé, making him one of the most expensive player acquisitions in their history.

The French winger joined the LaLiga club in the summer of 2017, for an initial fee that was reported at the time as being around €105,000,000 ($115,870,000). However, the payments to the selling club, Borussia Dortmund, were staggered and just recently did Barcelona finish the deal, with the final fee reported by BILD to stand at €148,000,000 ($163,320,000).

Since then, while Barcelona have been paying BVB, Dembélé has left the club on Spain’s east coast and moved north, to Paris Saint Germain, where he is now into his second season.

The situation at Barcelona, only paying off the total fee to Dortmund now, is nothing new in football. But the high fee can certainly be interpreted as a sign of just how badly the club negotiated after the sale of Neymar to PSG: Dembélé, across 185 matches, scored just 40 goals and got 43 assists, with injuries and attitude issues scattered through his time in Spain.

Last season, for PSG, Dembélé found his form and managed to shake off the injury woes: he contributed a total of 20 goals for his side in 43 games, scoring 6 goals and getting 14 assists.

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While transfer fees, as we can see with the Dembélé case, are never flat and fixed, making things difficult to judge, it is widely accepted that the Frenchman is not the most expensive player in FC Barcelona history. That award goes to Philippe Coutinho, who was signed from Liverpool in 2018.

The Brazilian midfielder played 106 times for the Spanish side, scoring 25 goals and getting 14 assists. After loans at Bayern Munich and Aston Villa, he was eventually sold to the English club for around €20 million ($22m) in 2022, and his time at the club, save for a 6-month spell when he first joined, is regarded as one of the worst financial deals in the club’s history.