In a way, Barcelona was turning into the Robert E. Lee of world football — in desperate need of some good press. Barca fans finally got something to cheer about Friday with the announcement the club signed 20-year-old Ousmane Dembélé from Borussia Dortmund for $125 million plus add ons.
In the early days of football and throughout most of the 20th century, it wasn’t uncommon for players to stay at a club for their entire career. Legends such as Santiago Bernabeu, Giampero Boniperti, Lev Yashin and dozens of others all stayed with one team for decades. It was kind of the thing to do.
Let's check in on the Barcelona social media department:
Oh dear. Last night some hackers did some hacking and announced the pretend signing of Angel Di Maria to the whole world. They didn't stop there, those involved spent the rest of the night urging Barcelona to contact them to get their Twitter account back and review their security procedures.
Barcelona the club might still be mad at Neymar for leaving, but the Brazilian forward's former teammates are clearly still buddies with him.
Look how happy everyone looks in this picture!
Every football club in the world wants to buy Lionel Messi, but there are only a few that can even begin to think about maybe trying to buy him, because Messi would cost a truly absurd amount of money. We'll start with Lionel Messi's $352.7 million release clause, a sum so insanely high that until a few weeks ago it was unfathomable that anyone would ever pay it, even for the best footballer ever.
Barcelona is on the market for a new beau. The club is on Tinder, Bumble, Grindr, everything searching for someone to fill the hole in its left wing heart left by Neymar. But Barca sees Neymar smiling and laughing with a new love in Paris and gets angry.
Like a worm-filled peach, Barcelona appear to be rotting from the inside. After the departure of Neymar and the inability to bring in a replacement (they reportedly have given up on Philippe Coutinho), Barcelona's business-folk have not been holding up their end of the bargain.
With Ousmane Dembele’s transfer opera turning sour and Luis Suarez out for up to five weeks with a knee injury, Barcelona opened their La Liga campaign on Sunday with Lionel Messi shouldering the burden of his side’s attacking ambition.
But the play of the day wasn’t provided by Messi, it was provided by the only Argentinian teammate he can rely on, Javier Mascherano.