Barcelona's hierarchy remain adamant that there are no unresolved issues between the club and Ousmane Dembele, despite a spate of recent rumours revolving around the Frenchman’s potential departure.
Dembele skipped two days of training last week, supposedly due to a stomach bug, causing Ernesto Valverde to leave him out of the squad for Barcelona’s 4-3 defeat to Real Betis.
The £96m midfielder’s off-field behaviour had already come under recent scrutiny when he was left out of the squad for Barcelona’s Champions League tie against Inter Milan last month due to arriving late to a team meeting.
Issues over immaturity prompted Gerard Pique to say that Dembele needed to “understand that football is a 24-hour job and he has to live accordingly" and caused the club’s general manager, Pep Segura, to meet with Dembele’s representatives this week.
But in an interview with Cadena Ser, Segura said that "there's no problem with Dembele."
"It's a normal situation for a young player with a lot of talent who has arrived at a club as big as Barca, full of great players," he continued. "He had never experienced that before and there's an adaptation process that he has to go through.
"He's really young and he's never had to get up to adjust to a playing style like ours. We admit he's finding it difficult. He also recognises that. What we are doing is working as hard as possible so that he can adapt in the best possible way.
"It's true that I had a meeting with the agents of Dembele. But yesterday I had three meetings with three representatives. My job is to meet with representatives, they are common things."
There have been a number of rumours linking Dembele with a move away from the club, first to Arsenal last summer, who had reportedly prepared a £100m bid, and now to Liverpool with Jurgen Klopp supposedly a keen admirer of the 21-year-old.
"As of today we have no offers for Dembele and we have no plans to change the structure of the squad," he said.
