Barcelona missed the opportunity to sign this Serie A superstar

Barcelona does not have the best track record of signing from other clubs. Most of their club legends were made in Barca while some were obviously brought in. In the past few years, however, most of the club’s transfers have been a bit of a dud. Players such as Philippe Coutinho, Ousmane Dembele, Antoine Griezmann, Miralem Pjanic, Francisco Trincao, etc, have not delivered what they could have and they have all struggled at the club. What makes these transfers worse is that Barca could have signed players who went on to become world stars but their scouting team and board of management did not do their jobs well enough.

It is no secret that former club president, Josep Maria Bartomeu was an erratic buyer. He did not think about which players would actually fit into the team system and went mostly on name value. Thus, when given the choice between Kylian Mbappe and Dembele, he chose the latter because he said that Mbappe was not a team player and was not exactly what they were looking for. This was a fatal error however, this was not the only error that he made. In 2020, he let go of Luis Suarez due to his age and did not even find a replacement striker.

Barcelona could have secured a solid striker in 2020

He had the chance in 2020 to sign now Juventus striker, Dusan Vlahovic, however, he refused to do so because the player had injury problems. However, he also only scored six goals in the previous season so that was probably also a factor in rejecting the player. The main issue is that he was offered on loan and Barca could have at least tried out the player and he might have found his super form in Catalunya. Instead, the president made Ronald Koeman play without a decent striker and Martin Braithwaite was never going to make it into the main team. This was another horrible judgment made by Bartomeu.

Should Barca have signed a young Vlahovic?