MARCH 3 — Ousmane Dembele has endured a tough time of things since becoming the second-most expensive footballer in the world last summer.

The French forward was signed by Barcelona from Borussia Dortmund as a reaction to unexpectedly losing Neymar to Paris St Germain, with the initial fee of €105 million (RM508 million) potentially rising to €147 million depending on individual and team success.

That is an enormous sum for any player, never mind a talented but raw 20-year-old who had only played two seasons of senior football, with a breakthrough campaign at Rennes being followed by a strong year in Dortmund before Barca pounced.

The fee was so high because it was a panic buy, with Barca knowing they had to act very quickly indeed after losing such a key member of their team. 

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Taking Neymar out of the team significantly weakened them, and they were forced to pay massively over the odds to land a player who could — they hoped — provide something like the attacking quality they had lost.

That’s an enormous burden for such a young and inexperienced player to carry, and perhaps the mental pressure placed upon Dembele contributed to a serious muscle injury he suffered in just his second start for the team, against Getafe in September.

After more than three months out he came back in January, but soon suffered another thigh strain and was sidelined for another month, leaving many Barca fans impatiently wondering exactly what they had spent so much money on.

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That frustrated feeling was further enhanced by the recent first leg of the Champions League tie at Chelsea, when Barca fell behind and it was blindingly obvious that coach Ernesto Valverde needed to inject some more attacking menace from the bench.

Dembele was one of his options after returning to fitness but being left out of the starting line-up, but instead Valverde showed just how little confidence he had in the Frenchman by instead opting for Aleix Vidal, a rarely used converted full-back.

That game prompted quite a debate in Barca-land, with the general consensus being that Valverde — who is by nature a cautious coach — needs to compromise his determination to achieve defensive control and add more attacking thrust to a team which is looking rather limited with Luis Suarez and Lionel Messi at the point of attack but little else to support them.

Dembele, as a 100 million-plus signing, should obviously be the man to provide that missing penetration, and it’s high time for the former Dortmund man to be unwrapped from the cotton wool which has encased him during the first six months of the season.

However much the fee might be weighing him down, it’s time for Dembele to start proving his worth because without him, it’s unlikely Barca will have the necessary variety in attack to go all the way in the Champions League.

Unexpectedly, the team also suddenly have domestic concerns after a few dropped points and Atletico Madrid’s electric burst of form combining to narrow Barca’s lead at the top of the table to just five points, with the two teams set to meet on Sunday afternoon at Camp Nou.

If Barca can get the victory this weekend, their lead would effectively be nine points because they would also hold the head-to-head advantage over Atletico (the first tie-breaker in La Liga, rather than goal difference), and we could regard the title race as practically over.

But Atletico will make it difficult, buoyed in confidence by a superb run of results sparked by newly-formed strike pairing Antoine Griezmann and Diego Costa.

For the last couple of years Griezmann has badly lacked a reliable partner up front, but Costa’s return to the club from Chelsea has finally given him that support and the improvement to their attacking play has allowed Atletico to win their last six league games with an aggregate scoreline of 16-2.

Griezmann, in particular, has been sensational, scoring seven goals in his last two games to reassert himself as one of the best strikers in world football after a below-par few months.

Intriguingly, he has been heavily linked with a €100m move to Barcelona at the end of the season, with the Camp Nou club making no secret of their interest, so he could well be lining up against his future team-mates this weekend.

One of those, Dembele, could well be a key figure in this weekend’s game, having been reintroduced into the starting line-up after all those injury problems for last week’s home victory over Girona, when he did enough to suggest that he can belatedly start to live up to his hefty price tag.

Dembele possesses exactly what the team has been lacking so far this season: the dribbling ability and creative skills to break through tightly packed and well organised defences, which is exactly what Atletico will present on Sunday after only conceding 11 goals in 26 league games so far this season.

Of course, Dembele will have to play a secondary role to Lionel Messi, but even the Argentine can’t do everything by himself and Barca would enormously benefit from the more directly penetrative skills of Dembele if the winger can find his top form.

And with the remainder of the Champions League campaign also rapidly approaching, there should be plenty of opportunity for Dembele to show his worth. His bad first season in Spain could yet end up becoming a major triumph.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.