The Unfortunate Case of Bojan Krkic
To those who are hardcore FIFA players, the name of Bojan Krkic might sound familiar. Bojan Krkic was one of the wonderkids on FIFA 09 with an overall rating of 79 with a potential of 92. He was the complete package and had every trait you would expect a legendary footballer to have. Bojan Krkic went from lighting up the La Liga with FC Barcelona to now playing in the Championship with Stoke City. Many football experts termed him as good as Messi. In this article, I am going to explain why Bojan Krkic never fulfilled his true potential.
Krkic had all the attributes we expect from a La Masia graduate. He was skillful, he had a wonderful balance, he was quick and he could score goals too. He joined FC Barcelona at the age of nine and within seven years he had over 850 goals to his name. Aged 15, he was joint top scorer at the 2006 Under-17 European Championships. He scored the winning goal in the finals of the same competition the next year.
Bojan Krkic beat Lionel Messi’s record as the youngest player to score in La Liga for FC Barcelona and soon became the first player born in the 1990s to play in the Champions League. The compliments and praises came in quickly. “Bojan is a treasure”, claimed the then Barcelona manager Frank Rijkaard. “There are only a few players who have a magical touch,” said Pep Guardiola, “and Bojan is one of them”. Some saw him as the new Lionel Messi. Others compared him to Raul. All was going good for the wonderkid who kept scoring goals with a smile on his face. In 2007/08, he made 48 appearances, scoring 12 goals and setting up another 6. For a teenager to record such numbers for a big club like FC Barcelona is nothing short of miraculous.
But with great expectations comes great pressure and Krkic could not cope with it. He was called up to the Spain senior team but he pulled out of with what was reported to be a panic attack. He was called up for the Euro 2008 but he pulled out once again. He said he was “physically and emotionally shattered”. “Pressure was being heaped on very young shoulders” wrote Lowe. “ He’d gone from a 16 year old inhabiting one world to a 17 year old living somewhere completely different.” “Overnight, I couldn’t even walk down the street,” Krkic said. “I couldn’t go to a birthday party or to the cinema.”
By the start of the 2008/09 season, there was a new man in charge. The sacking of Rijkaard was a huge blow for Krkic. “ Rijkaard had complete trust in me. He has a great personality. I had a relationship with him that I haven’t had with anyone else.” Krkic said. Under new manager Pep Guardiola, Krkic fell behind in the pecking order and started to get fewer and fewer game time, making less and less of an impact when he did play. This soon led to a falling out between him and Guardiola and after two more sparse seasons,Krkic left the club in 2011 without saying goodbye to him. “ As a fan, Guardiola is the best coach in the world, but personal things that have happened to me were hurtful.He was not fair with me on several occasions, and this is one of the reasons that I decided to leave.” Bojan Krkic stated.
Roma seemed like an obvious choice. The man who replaced Guardiola as the manager of the Barcelona B team, Luis Enrique was in charge of Roma and the club’s owners were eager for the team to play in a way that Krkic was more familiar with. “Luis Enrique represents an idea of football that we would like to follow which imposes itself today through Spain and Barcelona,” said then Roma’s sporting director Walter Sabatini. At Roma, he had plenty of playing time to impress- he made 33 appearances in his first season, more than any other player that season- and in patches he did score, scoring 7 goals in his first season. However, his form was inconsistent and he failed to impose himself on games. Easy chances were blown away and he was quickly overshadowed by other players within the squad. His lack of strength- not so much an issue in Spain- held him back and his mental toughness was suspicious again.
“There are a lot of strong personalities in Serie A and Bojan wasn’t one of them”, says Italian football correspondent Susy Campanale. “He was very quiet and seemingly lacking in confidence. He was also accustomed to a different tactical style and Spanish forwards have traditionally struggled in Italy. They are not accustomed to being marked so firmly and expect far more time and space on the ball than they’re allowed in the Serie A.Bojan expected more than most. He needed to barge his way into the game a bit more but wanted to always have the classy move without the hardwork that goes with it.”
Bojan went to Milan on loan after his first season with Roma. He started just nine games- he made a further 14 appearances from the bench- scored just 3 goals and made the sort of impact on the Rossoneri that a fly has landing on a brown bear. It was the same problem but he was not helped by his contract situation. “It was reported” says Susy Campanale, “that the clause in his contract meant Milan would have to buy him out permanently if he amassed a certain number of appearances,so towards the end of the season they simply stopped playing him.” For a player of low confidence and desperately looking to find his former goal scoring form,that was a cruel blow.
From Milan, he continued his journey to Ajax.Like with his move from Roma,this seemed to be a sensible option. Historically, Ajax play the sort of football that would suit Krkic’s style and the Eredivisie didn’t focus much on physical strength as compared to the Serie A. “When Bojan was signed by Ajax, it was seen as quite a coup,” says Michael Jongsma from BeNeFoot. “In Eredivisie measures, it was as if a superstar had arrived because usually the type of player that joins the league is either a promising talent or an unknown player. In Bojan, they had the combination of a name well known in Europe and still the promise of someone who could go on to become a very good player.”
At Ajax, his decsison-making stood out for the wrong reasons. “He starts dribbles when a pass would be more appropriate”, says Jongsma. “He has also found himself in decent postitions to shoot but he waits for someone he could pass it to.” All signs pointed to the return of the old problems. His dip in form saw the Ajax fans turn on him too. He then signed for Stoke City in 2014 but hardly impressed in the English division as well, going on two loan spells, namely, Mainz 05 in 2017 and then Alavez between 2017–2018.
Bojan came back to Stoke from his loan spell still just 28 years of age looking to revive the fortunes from when he once had the world at his feet.