Barcelona’s Ousmane Dembélé has ‘dropped’ an offer from Chelsea to join them in the summer transfer window.
That’s according to Javier Matallanas, who says the Frenchman has rejected an offer from Thomas Tuchel’s side.
Dembélé is set to leave the Nou Camp on a free transfer in the summer when his contract comes to an end and is currently free to negotiate with clubs around Europe regarding a free transfer.
Chelsea are known to be one of his admirers and have been linked on several occasions over the last few years.
Those links re-emerged around January when Barcelona made it clear that they wanted to sell Dembélé because the trend was that he would not be signing a new deal.
That never happened, but in February, it was made clear they were still extremely keen, with it explained in Spain that ‘negotiations have begun’ about a move after Chelsea ‘decided to go with everything’ to secure his signature.
He doesn’t offer more than that, so it’s extremely vague, but this follows numerous reports from Spain in recent weeks that Dembélé wants to stay at Barcelona this summer.
The forward has apparently changed his mind about the Nou Camp and now wants to stay, so it would make sense for him to have ‘dropped’ offers from elsewhere.
In fact, it could be a symbolic gesture to Barcelona, who have made it clear they need the player to show he wants to stay before reopening negotiations about his contract.
Either way, it appears Chelsea are now out of the picture after previously deciding to do everything they can to Dembélé this summer.
