Will this force him to clean up his act? Barcelona have introduced a strange new rule in order to stop Ousmane Dembele turning up late to training. The Frenchman's timekeeping has been a consistent problem during his stint at the Camp Nou, something that has irked many at the club.
They now seem to have come up with a simple problem to the solution however. Marca are reporting that Barcelona has introduced a rule that the player is not allowed to turn off his phone, or leave it on silent, at night time. This is to ensure the player is contactable if he fails to report on time for training or other team events.
Barcelona manager Ernesto Valverde is not worried about any attitude problems with the player, but instead his propensity to enjoy a lie-in. His inability to get up early is believed to be caused by his tendency to stay up into the early hours playing video games.
He is not the first player to encounter video game related problems, with many speculating that Mesut Ozil's recent back problems have been brought on by playing too much Fortnite.
Demebele has also suffered some major injury problems since his move to Barcelona, but has shown flashes of becoming the player the club thought they were getting when they forked out over €100million for his services.
After turning up over two hours late for training last Sunday morning, he issued a timely reminder of his quality with this stunning goal against Tottenham two days later.
Barcelona go ahead after 7 minutes!
Nightmare moment for Kyle Walker-Peters!
Live on #VMSport! #UCL pic.twitter.com/bNBdKE61S1— Virgin Media Sport (@VMSportIE) December 11, 2018
It will certainly be interesting to track the player's progress over the next couple of seasons, and one would hope is given the chance to fulfil his full potential at Barcelona.
