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#3 Kevin-Prince Boateng | Loan
The two Frenchmen who feature above this name were once players who showed great promise, enough for Barcelona to spend big money on them and tie them down to hefty contracts. However, the very fact that a loan signing — for which the former LaLiga champions shelled out a mere €1m — features on this list is a sheer testament to how bizarre this deal was right from the offset.
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Kevin-Prince Boateng is a cult figure who has journeyed across four of Europe's five biggest football leagues and is currently on the books of Fiorentina. He was brought into the Barcelona squad on a loan deal from Sassuolo in the winter of 2019, but failed to leave as much as a metaphorical footprint on the prestigious Nou Camp turf.
The Ghanian played a grand total of 240 LaLiga minutes over three games for Barcelona, 90 of which came in quite literally a dead rubber fixture against Celta Vigo after Ernesto Valverde's men sealed the title. His most notable contribution, perhaps, a trademark unnecessary yellow card he picked up in those 90 minutes.
With no goals, no assists, no noticeable impact in the build-up and an overall lack of impetus of any sort, it remains one of the most un-Barcelona-esque signings made by the Catalans. His spell at the Nou Camp is one that neither the player nor the club would look back at fondly. By all accounts, it was a genuinely baffling signing.
#2 Antoine Griezmann | €120m
Speaking of baffling, there cannot possibly have been a more high-profile mismatch of playing style between a club and player than Antoine Griezmann and Barcelona. This isn't to say that either party are undeserving of each other. The Blaugrana are one of the most accomplished clubs in Spanish and European history, while Griezmann etched his name into history books after leading France to a World Cup win.
That being said, in terms of what the club needed in the summer of 2019 and what they purchased, it could possibly be one of the most bizarre signings in recent times. The charismatic Frenchman has found enormous success playing off a more physically imposing figure such as Diego Costa or Olivier Giroud. This has enabled him to exploit the central spaces left by defenders concerned about the target man, playing the role of a creative midfielder-second striker hybrid.
In other terms, he's a less capable version of a certain Argentine who wears FC Barcelona's armband. Difference in quality aside, Lionel Messi and Griezmann occupy relatively similar spaces on the pitch, due to which the French forward was pushed out wide — a role that he hasn't carried out since his Real Sociedad days.
With nine goals and four assists in 35 LaLiga games to show for, Griezmann's output was impacted directly due to this change in role, effectively nullifying the one thing he was synonymous with — scoring goals and creating space for his teammates. It remains to be seen how long he has left at the Nou Camp after a truly dismal debut season with the former champions.
#1 Philippe Coutinho | €145m
Where do we begin with this one? Unless and until there's a remontada of seismic measure of Philippe Coutinho's short career at the Nou Camp, the Brazilian will go down as the worst signing ever made by the club in their illustrious history. The former Liverpool man moved to Barcelona in the winter of 2018 for a staggering club-record fee of €145m under inauspicious circumstances.
Barcelona felt that Coutinho was the answer to their lack of a single creative presence in the final third who isn't named Lionel Messi. The Brazilian had a shaky yet respectable start to life as a Culer, scoring eight goals and setting up a further five in 18 LaLiga appearances. However, the following season, matters went from bad to worse for both parties.
Then-manager Valverde was insistent on playing Coutinho in a wider role to field a structured, robust midfield and uphold their defensive integrity in the middle. This caused the playmaker all sorts of trouble, and he ultimately failed to adapt at the Nou Camp, resulting in just five goals and two assists in 34 LaLiga fixtures. Coutinho was then shipped away to Bayern Munich on loan, and he came back to haunt them even more.
The 28-year-old attacker came on as a substitute for the Bavarians and, with the score already at 5-2, Coutinho needed just 15 minutes on the pitch to mastermind three more goals for his temporary employers.
His two goals and an assist in an explosive cameo was the icing on the cake for Bayern, much like they were knockout blows for the Blaugrana. What's worse is that should Coutinho win the UCL with the Germans, Barcelona will be set to shell out a further €5m to Liverpool as part of his clause.
All in all, it is one of the most remarkably poor signings in all of football history, let alone that of the mighty Catalans. Much like in the case of Dembele, Coutinho's former club Liverpool were perhaps the only winners from this blockbuster deal, enabling them to purchase Virgil van Dijk and Alisson Becker. The rest, as they say, is history.
Also read: 5 players who destroyed their parent clubs when on loan
