COMMENT: Crisis talks? Public condemnation? That wasn't in the script. Not for Ousmane Dembele. On the back of a LaLiga and Copa Double. A World Cup. This season was supposed to be the springboard...
... yet instead, this week they were all around a table. His agents. Barcelona directors. Trying to thrash out a way to get Dembele - the €140m investment - and his career back on the rails.
Poor timekeeping. Terrible habits. Even worse attitude. This season the flak has been flying thick and fast - and both from inside and out of the club.
"He does not know much, but it seems that he does not want to know," says one locker room source. "He lives in his own world," says another. Those opinions being floated after it emerged Luis Suarez, having tried to take his young teammate under his wing, had had enough and given up on the French attacker.
It reached crisis point last week, with coach Ernesto Valverde taking matters into his own hands - and overriding management's opinion.
Dembele, having - again - failed to get to the stadium on time for Barca's Champions League game with Inter Milan, was dropped completely last weekend for defeat at home to Real Betis. Pep Segura and Eric Abidal had recommended a fine - but keeping Dembele involved. However, Valverde - like Suarez - had had enough and took the decision to axe the player completely.
An exasperated head coach. Frustrated - even furious - senior teammates. We're painting a pretty bleak picture here. But that's just it. As this week's crisis summit suggests. No-one wants to give up on the lad. Not the board, the coaching staff, nor the players - including Suarez. Dembele is likeable. Quiet. Even humble. But he's riddled with terrible habits - which have been exacerbated by his move to Barcelona.
For this column, we were ready to blame his agents, specifically Moussa Sissoko, who appeared someone unprepared to tell Dembele some much needed home truths. But the fallout from this week's meeting suggests such an assertion would be wrong.
Sissoko attended the talks, along with fellow agent Marco Lichtsteiner, where the Barca side of the table implored the former to leave his London base and relocate to Barcelona. With Dembele's mother no longer living with him, it was the club's recommendation that Sissoko take her place - or at least someone the agent can fully rely upon. It says a lot of how highly they think of Sissoko if those attending on Barca's side of the table - president Josep Maria Bartomeu, vice-president Jordi Mestre, GM Pep Segura and sports director Eric Abidal - were eager to see him living closer to the player.
As mentioned, the club has no problem with Dembele as a man. Indeed, contrary to local claims last season, Dembele was embraced by his new teammates upon his arrival. Despite his price-tag and wages, there was no resentment from his more established colleagues as he showed a great willingness to mix with everyone inside the dressing room.
And the positive vibe was also felt amongst the coaching staff. He impressed all later in the season by taking it upon himself to approach assistant coach Jon Aspiazu about some specialist training on how best to utilise his leg speed in terms of running and positioning.
But as Sissoko and Lichtsteiner were made aware this week, the indiscretions, the errors, the disregard, they've been accumulating and are now a threat to Dembele's future as a Barca player.
Poor punctuality for training and team meetings. Trips abroad without seeking the club's consent. A lack of interest in meeting Barca's commercial commitments. No blow ups. No strops. But it is all stacking up. Off the pitch, he's upsetting those who keep the club and it's sponsors in simpatico. On the pitch, he's angered his teammates and coaching staff. And this was all made clear to Sissoko and Lichtsteiner.
"Ousmane needs people who love him around him, and who tell him to go to bed at a decent time, and get up on time for training," a source from this week's meeting reiterated.
"Someone who thinks of him before thinking about what he could get from him."
There was a lot of goodwill around this crisis summit. Goodwill which - barely hours after the meeting broke up - will have been stretched as news arrived from Germany of legal action being taken against Dembele.
Almost 18 months after his messy departure from Borussia Dortmund, Dembele is now being pursued by the 71 year-old owner of the house he had leased while in Germany. Over €20,000 is being sought for the way he left the place. "Everywhere there was garbage and rubbish, there were rotten food in the fridge, among the cupboards," the complainant alleges, "There was a pile of unpaid bills behind the front door". But it gets worse...
Gerd Weissenberg claims he even had to change all the locks as Dembele never returned his house keys! Not exactly the behaviour expected from a player of Barcelona.
Those involved in this week's summit will hope such matters will belong in Dembele's past. And the player must see that everyone connected are trying to do their best by him.
But for Dembele to succeed something has to give. And those on his side of the table will know it won't be Barca who will be seeking to change.