MADRID, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- FC Barcelona winger Ousmane Dembele looks to have played his last game for the club after he was left out of their squad for the night's Copa del Rey tie away to Athletic Club Bilbao on Thursday.
The club announced they will look to sell him before the transfer window closes at the end of January.
Speaking on BarcaTV, Director of Football Mateu Alemany explained that the failure to reach an agreement over the player's new contract had persuaded the club to make the move to avoid him leaving for free at the end of June.
"We began conversations with Ousmane and his agents in July approximately. In all of these nearly seven months, we have spoken and Barca have made several offers to find a way for the player to remain with us and these offers have been systematically rejected."
"It seems clear to us that the player doesn't want to stay with Barcelona and has no commitment to the future project of Barca, so in this situation we have told him and his agents that he has to leave immediately, because we want committed players and we hope a transfer happens before January 31," said Alemany.
Alemany's declarations come just a day after Barca coach Xavi Hernandez said in his pre-game press conference that if the winger didn't sign a new deal he would have to leave as he only wanted committed players in his squad.
24-year-old Dembele joined Barca from Borussia Dortmund for over 100 million euros in the summer of 2017. However, despite his obvious talent, a continued stream of injuries have limited him to 129 first team appearances since then, in which he has scored 31 goals. ■
