Failing to make the grade at Real Madrid doesn’t make you a bad footballer, and there are plenty of footballers who failed to deliver at the Santiago Bernabeu who went on to big things elsewhere.
Take a look around Europe’s top leagues in any given season and you’ll see countless players with the Spanish club on their CV, with plenty of them doing enough to make you wonder why things didn’t click.
Whether it’s academy players who didn’t step up or signings who failed to impress and were swiftly moved on, the ex-Real Madrid contingent contains plenty of stars.
Here, we look at nine players who excelled after leaving Los Blancos.
Samuel Eto’o
Eto’o might be top of the ‘ones who got away’ list, having gone on to win trebles with two separate Champions League victors despite playing just a handful of games in a Real Madrid shirt.
In fairness, with Raul and Fernando Morientes ahead of him in the queue, and Ronaldo joining a couple of years later, his path to first-team football wasn’t exactly clear.
The Cameroonian left for Mallorca at the age of 19, having failed to score in any of his seven games for Los Blancos, but went on to play a significant role in Barcelona’s run to the 2006 and 2009 Champions League titles before helping Jose Mourinho’s Inter win the same competition in 2010.
Samuel ETO’O with Real Madrid !! (1999-2000)#FootballCard pic.twitter.com/fChtDd2U3c
— Old School Panini (@OldSchoolPanini) January 30, 2018
Wesley Sneijder
Another member of Inter’s 2010 squad, Sneijder did enough in that one season in Milan to leave us wondering why Real Madrid were so willing to let him go.
The Dutch midfielder joined in the same window as compatriot Arjen Robben and played a similar number of games but was struggling to make his long-term case even before Kaka’s arrival all but sealed his exit.
Not only did he thrive in that first season in Italy, but he was one of the stars of the 2010 World Cup, taking the Netherlands to the final and coming very close to humbling his former club team-mates as the Oranje took Spain to extra-time.
Klaas-Jan Huntelaar
Huntelaar wasn’t bad in a Real Madrid shirt, but he never really got a chance, with Manuel Pellegrini shipping the Dutchman off less than a year after he arrived from Ajax.
The striker netted eight times in 20 games before being cast aside for Karim Benzema, and he has thrived ever since.
His 126 goals for Schalke included 48 in a single one season and a stunning…
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