Bojan Krkic has been through many of the highs and lows that football has to offer – from being hyped as the next big thing to suffering a serious injury that hampered his hopes of hitting the heights he was perhaps capable of.
But the former Barcelona wonderkid is now using all of that experience to help guide the next generation of stars, preparing them for both the good times and the bad.
He is back at the club he started his career at, working in a football co-ordinator role at Barcelona, with his primary focus on monitoring the youth at the club’s famed La Masia – the youth academy he came through.
Bojan told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Euro Leagues podcast: “I am quite young at 34, I could still be playing but the decisions you have to make in life sometimes you have to decide, and I decided to stop playing and start a new life in football.
“Right now there are many things to do in this big club, co-ordinate all the young players who come to train with us, to evaluate these young players and see when they can be ready to train with us, and when they have some struggle situations – injured or whatever – to chat with them.”
In many ways, Bojan is the perfect person for aspiring footballers to seek guidance from.
He was once dubbed ‘the next Lionel Messi’ and while for plenty it would be an honour to be compared to one of football’s greatest, it is a label that also carries with it a great weight of expectation.
After scoring 900 goals for the Barcelona youth teams, he made his first-team debut at the age of 17 years and 19 days, breaking the record set by Messi.
He went on to score an impressive 12 goals in 48 matches in his first season in senior football, with his displays further enhancing those comparisons with the Argentina star.
But for Bojan, he did not want to be the next Messi – only Bojan.
“I knew what player I was,” he added.
“I knew the good things I had, the things I had to work on. I knew I was not Messi or anyone, I was Bojan.
“But when people demand for you to be at that level, it is difficult to live with that expectation.
“It was difficult to find a way.”
