Speaking in an exclusive interview with Get French Football News to be published in full tomorrow, Barcelona left-back Lucas Digne’s agent discussed his client’s current situation.
One of the most controversial of Didier Deschamps’ decisions was the omission of Barcelona left-back Lucas Digne. Is he considering his future at Barcelona, especially with the 12 games played as a part of La Liga last season and not making the national team at the end of the season?
We were all surprised. I think that most of the people in France were surprised also, knowing that Lucas had played the last 3 or 4 games up to the World Cup, starting for the team and had played maybe his best games for France since he started playing for them. Everyone was surprised, us included. This is a coach’s choice, and we can agree or disagree but at the end of the day he makes the choice and there is nothing we can do about it except being disappointed and thinking we should have been there and deserved to be there, but this is football for you.
Looking back now, I think Didier Deschamps would have done differently if he had known what would have happened (re: Benjamin Mendy’s fitness). He should have known that Mendy had not played more than 65 minutes of football in 8 months – of course it was a very risky choice. I am not going to question or argue about his choices.
He played a little bit less than he played the season before for Barcelona. Let’s not forget that he was injured for 1 month as well towards the end of the season, so without that injury, he maybe would have had another couple of games that would have put his total tally to more or the less the same as the year before.
When we signed for Barcelona, we knew very well which situation we were going to be in. We knew that there was a very good player in Alba already playing there, who is the number one choice in the national team and a very good player. We knew this situation, Lucas also knew what he was going into. He is very proud to play for this club and he enjoys every game that he gets for them and I think he is showing that because this season I think he played outstandingly. He is a Barcelona player and I think everyone can see that.
We have a long contract still with the club, the club is very happy about Lucas. It is not a situation where the club is saying Lucas has to leave or we saying we have to leave. It is a situation about a club and a player that actually likes each other very much. But you know of course you always want to play more. All footballers want to play week in, week out, but we made the choice to go to Barcelona.
Let’s see what happens, but at the moment we are not really thinking about it. Lucas is at Barcelona, it is the biggest club in the world. You don’t just leave the biggest club in the world. Lucas is happy to stay on and I know and Barcelona knows that Lucas has a big part to play again this season to help achieve their incredible goals. They want to win everything so they need not only 11 players, but 16 to 18 absolute top, world class players to reach those goals, otherwise they can’t achieve them.
