Earlier, Marca compared the figures of the two players and said Barca would need to make a tough choice – whether to renew Dembele or buy out Traore.
This is indeed a difficult problem. Judging by the performance of the players, Dembele is clearly superior. So far, Dembele has made 12 appearances in La Liga, for a total of 756 minutes, scoring 1 goal and assisting 9 times, just behind Benzema in the assists list. And the gap between the 2 is only 2 times, and now that Benzema is injured and Dembele is in good shape, it is possible to complete the counter-overtaking. In addition, Dembele's passing accuracy was 84.7% and it was 5 shots on target.
Traore made six appearances for 267 minutes, scored no goals and delivered two assists. Shots on target twice, passing accuracy of 83.5%.
In this regard, Marca believes that Barca faces 4 available options, that is, to keep only Dembele, only Traore, both at the same time or neither.
The words have all been said by Marca, can Barca have a 5th option? So what is the fan's point of view? According to the survey done by Marca (a total of 113642 people voted), 40% of fans believe that Barça should keep 2 people, 37% of fans think That Barca should only keep Dembele, 15% think Barca should only keep Traore, and only 10% of fans think that neither of them will stay.
Dembele is clearly more favored in terms of the choice of fans, with the French attacker successfully reversing the impression of the vast majority of fans with his performance. Judging from the current situation, 2 people have their own advantages.
Dembele's performance has managed to win him more trust, believing that the Barca hierarchy as well as Xavi want to keep him. Because if Dembele is allowed to leave the team for free, Barca's desire to find players of similar age and similar abilities will definitely be a sky-high price, and whether they can find them is also unknown. But according to previous news, Barca will not issue a new contract extension, and Dembele is also waiting for a call from Barca's top brass, and the two sides seem to be in a psychological war.
Traore's strengths are that the salary requirements are much lower than That of Dembele, and the 30 million euro buyout fee may also be raised through the sale of Trincan.
But the disadvantages of the two are also obvious. Dembele's 5-year, $200 million contract asking price is too high, far exceeding the psychological expectations of Barca's top brass. We know that under the blind operation of former president Bartomeu, Barca are heavily indebted and players' salaries are high. Therefore, after La Porta returned to the helm of Barcelona, the first task was to cut expenses, that is, to reduce the burden.
As a result, salary cuts and cost-effective reinforcements are mainstream, and positive progress has been made. We can see that for the future core of Araujo and Garvey, who came out of their own academy, barca executives are all slashing and searching when talking about salary. What would anyone else think if they agreed to Dembele's sky-high contract requirements? How to negotiate the contract in the future?
Traore's disadvantage is that his performance is a bit of a high-open-low trend. Having just returned to Barca, Traore played an explosive effect on the flanks, earning the nickname "Plum Rhinoceros". However, after the shortcomings of a single means of attack are targeted, the effect is significantly reduced. Barca have other, more important goals this summer, and being able to sell Trincon without buying out Traore will only loosen the club's finances and make the competition for the primary goal more confident.
Therefore, it is not realistic to keep 2 people. The best outcome was that Dembele lowered the requirements appropriately, and Barca hit it off. If not, then the end result is likely to be that both of them will leave. With Barca's recent performance in the transfer market, we can fully expect to find the right new people to fill the vacancy.