Barcelona will be taking on Atletico Madrid in the La Liga on Saturday and now Ernesto Valverde has revealed that Ousmane Dembele will not feature for this game.
The Catalans are currently on top of the table – eight points ahead of Atletico who sit on the second spot and three points in this match would mean that Barca will virtually be uncatchable.
And it looked like they had received a huge boost after Ousmane Dembele had returned back to training.
Ousmane Dembele had suffered a torn hamstring during Barcelona’s Champions League Round of 16 clash and it was more or less certain that the Frenchman would be out for a significant amount of time.
But then the 21-year-old shocked everyone by making a comeback earlier this week.
💪 Fierce @Dembouz fierce!
🔵🔴 #ForçaBarça pic.twitter.com/xjvY4vAbi0— FC Barcelona (@FCBarcelona) April 4, 2019
And immediately every major publication started claiming that Ousmane Dembele will be fit to start on Saturday and also against Manchester United in the Champions League.
Now though, Ernesto Valverde has made it clear that the youngster will not be available for the Atletico clash.
“He is not going to be available tomorrow and we do not know if he will be on Wednesday either,” Valverde said in a press conference on Friday.
“We don’t want to risk him, either tomorrow or Wednesday and then have a bigger problem in the matches that are coming up. We will see how he is doing. For sure, tomorrow he will be out.”
It is still unclear whether Ousmane Dembele will be fit for the Champions League tie or not but given the importance of the tie, Valverde would atleast want to have the youngster on the bench.
