Barcelona's Most Over-Hyped Players of Last 10 Years

Barcelona are one of those rare sides in world football that automatically lends its name by association to suggest that players, all players, tied to the club are as exceptional as the history of the shirt.

In many cases it's true, of course; the reputation of Barca has come about because of the great players down the years who have won so many trophies, especially over the past two decades.

But it's not the case every time.

Sometimes a player, signed or produced by the club's academy, can be given the Barcelona cachet and credibility, hyped up to the heavens that they are the next Xavi, the new Messi, the replacement for Carles Puyol...and it doesn't quite happen.

Here are some of the unfortunates, the most over-hyped of the last decade to have failed to live up to expectations—though it's not always their fault, it must be acknowledged.

Andre Gomes

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Let's start with the current side and a current midfielder.

Andre Gomes has quality. He's a technical player, he can spray passes all over the pitch and has good vision. It's a good starting point—but it's nowhere near enough, and the truth is the 23-year-old never showed the kind of consistency required at Valencia to be signed by Barcelona, certainly not for as much money as he was.

Over-hyped? Well, that came partly from the club and partly from outside; Barca didn't help matters by including clauses in the transfer only payable if Gomes "won multiple Ballons d'Or," and UEFA's report on Gomes cited his "confidence in taking people on"—a lesser-spotted talent this season, for sure—as a skill Barcelona would be "able to call upon for years to come."

Those years to come are unlikely to ever arrive, with recent reports from Diario Gol (h/t the Express) suggesting Lionel Messi wants the Portuguese midfielder sold.

Despite describing himself as "a mix of Andres Iniesta and Ivan Rakitic," Gomes has rarely come close to the qualities on show from either team-mate.

Sergi Samper

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As with Martin Odegaard and Borja Mayoral at Real Madrid, the case of Sergi Samper is tempered by youth and the potential to improve—but time is running out for the midfielder.

A graduate of La Masia, Samper has been with the Catalan side since his formative years and, for a good four or five years, has been tipped to make the breakthrough at senior level.

And "make the breakthrough" is putting it mildly; Samper, a holding midfielder with genuine class to his game, has been hailed as everything from the replacement for Sergio Busquets to the new Pep Guardiola—serious hype for the then-teenager.

He's now 22 and on loan at Granada—and not always a starter. Samper has a new contract at Barca, but Gerard Gumbau was preferred to him last season when Luis Enrique wanted a youth-team midfielder to step up, and Samper must be hoping for a new coach in summer who rates him far more.

Adama Traore

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Moving from midfield into the attacking line, there's a long list of Barcelona starlets who were tipped for big things...yet fell somewhat short, to one extent or another.

We're not including them all, because merely not being as good as Messi or Pedro is not what makes a youngster overhyped and underwhelming—Cristian Tello, Isaac Cuenca and Jeffren Suarez weren't tipped for world domination, for example—but there are some cases where the expectation was enormous.

Adama Traore was one.

Now at Middlesbrough, Traore's incredible acceleration and ability to beat defenders made him a standout at youth level, and he was tipped to break through along with the likes of Munir, Sandro and Alen Halilovic. None of the quartet now remain at Barca on a full-time basis.

Adama, now 21, was chased by Manchester United and Liverpool during his development years but eventually wound up at Aston Villa before switching to Boro.

The incredible technique and pace is there, but it is yet to be truly harnessed to yield significant end product.

Gerard Deulofeu

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"We don't want anyone to compare Gerard Deulofeu with Messi," said Barcelona's sporting director Andoni Zubizarreta, instantly ensuring everyone would do exactly that.

The comments came after Deulofeu had ripped apart the under-19 European Championship, helping Spain win. He was just 17 and already promoted to Barcelona's first team: a tricky, explosive winger who found it easy to dribble past defenders, cut inside and shoot or lay it off for a team-mate.

UEFA's profile of his performance at the tournament highlighted why he was seemingly set for superstardom: the big difference between sides, again and again, including the quarters, semis and final itself.

As a teenager, he was picked as one primed for the senior national team along with Real Madrid's Jese (now at Las Palmas via Paris Saint-Germain), Liverpool's Suso (now AC Milan) and Valencia's Paco Alcacer (now Barcelona).

In 2012-13, Deulofeu still hadn't made the cut at Barca, but still the hype came in waves: Now he was the one set for a break-out season in La Liga. The other names? Antoine Griezmann, Raphael Varane, Alcacer once again.

It never happened. Deulofeu never harnessed his talent in time for Barcelona. Sevilla and Everton both took him on loan, the latter then signed him permanently.

Deulofeu, now 23, has since made the Spain national team after impressing at Milan since a January loan switch, but he's light years away from the heights initially expected of him.

Gai Assulin

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Once upon a time, there was an Israeli Messi, and his name was Gai Assulin.

Call the comparisons absurd if you wish, but the long hair, the playing from the flanks, the education at La Masia and trickery of footwork were all there—and it gave rise to the expectation that Assulin would be next in line to make the grade and star for Barcelona.

He never played for the seniors and was released on a free transfer in 2010.

Manchester City picked him up and had hopes that, along with the start of their big expenditure on made-to-order star names, he would be one of the first to break through the youth system, too.

He never played for the seniors and was released on a free transfer.

In a recent interview with ITV's Will Unwin, 25-year-old Assulin admitted he didn't like the Messi tag and that it gave him too much pressure. He currently plays in the third tier in Spain with Sabadell.

Giovani Dos Santos

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From wide forwards to centre-forwards now, and Gio dos Santos is the first name who didn't reach the heights he might have.

The Mexican was a star in his home nation after winning the Under-17 World Championships in 2005 and was quickly part of the national team setup, but the same fondness was never extended to him at Barcelona.

Now 27, Dos Santos was clearly a player with talent and a need for a manager who trusted him, but from potentially being one of the best second strikers around, he embarked on a meandering career taking in Tottenham, Ipswich, Mallorca, Villarreal and now LA Galaxy.

The talent is there from time to time, but the consistency never matched the hype surrounding his formative years.

Bojan Krkic

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A stunning breakout season brought Bojan Krkic to the attentions of the footballing world in 2007/08, incidentally making his debut coming on for our last featured player, Gio dos Santos.

Bojan had scored close to 1,000 goals for Barca's youth teams, he broke Messi's record for youngest player in La Liga and was trusted by Pep Guardiola at just age 17. He was the first player born in the 1990s to score in the UEFA Champions League, he made his debut for the Spanish national team and would have been in the Euro 2008 squad but pulled out citing tiredness after his first season as a senior.

The world was at his feet and he looked set to take it all in his stride.

Best forward in Europe? New Messi? New Raul? Listen to the conversations in bars and sports centres around Spain at the time and you'd have heard them all.

His nose-dive was sudden, spectacular and utterly unexpected; Bojan has never since played for Spain again, Roma didn't take up their option to sign him after a loan, Ajax barely played him and it wasn't until Stoke City signed him that Bojan re-discovered his form somewhat.

Now 26, he's on loan at Mainz in the Bundesliga.

Keirrison

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Hype isn't always drummed up because of years of endeavour, building up to a breakthrough moment. Sometimes it's just bad decisions, bad timing or bad judgement. Keirrison perhaps embodied all three.

Barcelona signed him ahead of other suitors in 2009 and decreed him the man likely to lead Brazil's attack at the World Cup in 2014, which would coincidentally come at the end of his five-year contract after a €14 million move.

In case you happened to miss those World Cup finals, Keirrison was decidedly not a part of the national team.

Indeed, he never played for Barca, barely featured in Europe anywhere, despite loans at Benfica and Fiorentina, and eventually headed back to Brazil in 2014, not for the World Cup finals but on a free transfer.

Since signing for Barca, the 28-year-old has never hit double figures in a season for any club, is now playing with Arouca and was labelled the worst signing in Barcelona's history by Fichajes (in Spanish).

Javier Saviola

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Maybe Keirisson never had the talent, maybe Bojan never had the determination, maybe Dos Santos never had the self-belief and aggression in his game.

Javier Saviola had all three, which makes it even more of a mystery why he never hit heights he looked to be capable of.

An agile, low-to-the-ground forward, Saviola was an Argentina youth international who starred at the U-20 World Cup in 2001, convincing Barca to shell out a massive £15 million on the 19-year-old. At that time it looked as if he could be one of the world's finest, a lethal striker with technique and pace—and his first half-season at Barca backed up that claim.

Two seasons later, he was barely a starter, shipped out on loan and then allowed to leave on a free transfer to Real Madrid in 2007. It would have registered outrage had he been a fraction as good as he looked as a kid, but few cared—that's how hard and far Saviola's star fell.

He could have been a great but ended a wandering, hard-working journeyman of a forward, at Malaga, Olympiacos and the like—a far cry from what might have been when he led Argentina at the 2004 Olympics to the gold medal.