As one of the biggest clubs in the world, Barcelona have extremely high standards – and even some of the best players around can struggle to meet them.
Barcelona have won La Liga 25 times, the Copa del Rey 30 times and the Champions League five times in their history, but their success since Pep Guardiola took charge of the first team in 2008 has been something else.
It has meant plenty of high-profile players have moved to the Nou Camp in that time and failed to really establish themselves. Here are some of the most notable examples.
Philippe Coutinho
The most high-profile of the lot? Quite possibly. The most expensive? Definitely. Barca paid Liverpool £121.5million for the Brazilian in January 2018.
To be fair, Coutinho had been brilliant under Jurgen Klopp, creating chances and scoring long-range curlers for fun. But he could never fit into Barca’s 4-3-3 – neither was he a natural Andres Iniesta replacement in midfield nor was he the wide man the Blaugrana needed to fill Neymar’s shoes.
It says something that the most notable thing he did at Camp Nou was to score two goals in a Champions League quarter-final… for Bayern Munich in an 8-2 thrashing of the club he was on loan from.
Antoine Griezmann
Another one of Barcelona’s mega-money signings of the late 2010s, Griezmann arrived for £108million in the summer of 2019 and proved just as ill-suited to the famous Barcelona way as Coutinho.
Naturally a second striker, he struggled to slot in either as the centre-forward or right-winger in the 4-3-3.
After 22 league goals in his two full seasons at the club, Griezmann was sent back to his former club Atletico on loan. Things haven’t gone much better back in Madrid, mind you, with just three goals in 23 La Liga games in 2021-22.
Andre Gomes
Barcelona fought off competition from Real Madrid to sign Gomes from Valencia in 2016 for an initial €35million.
With a further €20million in possible add-ons included in the deal, Gomes was Barca’s…
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