Dembelé's Multiple Injuries at FC Barcelona
Ousmane Dembelé has suffered a huge number of physical injuries since he arrived at FC Barcelona in 2017. Dembelé’s injuries have prevented him from training normally and performing at his best for the Blaugrana team.
Just 25 years old, the French striker emerged as a scintillating figure, first at Stade de Rennes in his native country. Then he made his way to Germany, where he played for Borussia Dortmund. It was there that he caught the attention of FC Barcelona, who invested 140 million Euros in his signing.
However, the physical aspect did not accompany the great talent of the attacker, who spent more than 700 days inactive during his years in the Spanish league.
Dembelé’s various injuries
In the following article, we’re going to describe what physical problems Ousmane Dembelé suffered from as a Barcelona player. Many of them are muscular injuries, but there are also other more serious types of injuries.
1. Dembelé’ tears and muscular problems in the thigh
The thigh, the part of the leg located between the hip and the knee, is where Dembelé has had the most problems with injuries. He has suffered repeated injuries in both the biceps and the hamstring, which are muscles at the front and back of the leg.
In 2017, in his first season at Barcelona, he had a ruptured tendon in the biceps femoris of the left thigh. He underwent surgery and spent 106 days off the field. This tendon is the one that connects the biceps femoris muscle to the ischium, a bone that’s located in the lower part of the pelvis.
Subsequently, in January 2018, the player had barely returned from the previous injury and had a fibrillar rupture in his left thigh. This is nothing more than an injury, also known as a tear, in which the fibers that make up the muscle are broken. To return to physical activity after this type of injury, it’s necessary to wait for these fibers to recompose themselves.
The hamstrings are located in the thigh. An injury there prevents any physical activity.
The following year, in 2019, the player suffered an elongation in the biceps femoris of the left thigh. In this case, there’s a stretch that generates pain, but no rupture or hematoma. Recovery usually takes a couple of days.
Although he recovered quickly, the premature return to the field worked against him, and he had a muscle tear in the biceps femoris of his left leg that left him inactive for almost a month. In other words, he suffered from a whole new tear.
That same year, he repeated other injuries in the hamstring muscles of his right leg. In 2020, he also suffered from another muscle injury in the left thigh. The last injury along these lines was an elongation in the semimembranosus muscle of his left thigh in June 2021.
2. Dembelé’s ankle sprains
At the beginning of 2019, Dembelé suffered from a sprained left ankle. In the previous season, in 2018, he had already injured his right ankle with the same condition.
A sprain is a partial or total strain or tear of a ligament. This injury usually occurs after a sudden movement or excessive twisting that this structure of the body is not able to withstand.
The 2019 injury left Dembelé 18 days inactive, while the previous one had occurred in the last game of the 2017/2018 season, so he didn’t miss any of his team’s matches.
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3. Knee problems
As with many other footballers, knees have also created problems for Dembelé’s physical well-being. This is to be expected considering that soccer is a contact sport in which these joints receive permanent impact with every step.
In any case, it should be noted that knee injuries are not abundant in Dembelé’s medical history. It was only in 2021, during the European Championship, that he suffered from a disinsertion of the biceps tendon in his right knee, while playing for the France national team. This left him not only out of the tournament, but also out of the following preseason with Barça.
Specifically, the disinsertion of a tendon occurs when it’s disconnected from the joint it’s supposed to join with a muscle group. In this case, the biceps tendon was disinserted from the knee joint.
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Dembelé and his many injuries with FC Barcelona
The injuries that Dembelé has had to go through have shown that an athlete’s physique is just as important as his ability or the innate gift he may have. The two go hand in hand and must be enhanced to perform at the highest level.
Due to bad luck, biological reasons, or perhaps some other reason, Ousmane Dembelé has been dogged by injuries with Barcelona and has been sidelined for more than a hundred games. He’s still young, but he will have to find solutions if he wants to prolong his career with Europe’s top teams.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Ousmane Dembélé. Lesiones. Transfermarkt. https://www.transfermarkt.com.ar/ousmane-dembele/verletzungen/spieler/288230
- Nápoles Carreras, J.L. 2015. Desinserción de un músculo. Colegio Profesional de Fisioterapeutas de Aragón. https://www.zaragozadeporte.com/Noticia.asp?id=3001#:~:text=La%20desinserci%C3%B3n%20de%20un%20m%C3%BAsculo,en%20el%20calentamiento%20y%20estiramientos.
- Sastre, S. Lesiones musculares, qué son y por qué se producen. Barna Clinic. https://www.barnaclinic.com/blog/traumatologia-deportiva/2015/10/30/lesiones-musculares/#:~:text=Elongaci%C3%B3n%3A%20Se%20trata%20de%20una,de%205%20a%2010%20d%C3%ADas
