Mostafa Boudrissa
As much as Lionel Messi's career was dazzling and inspiring to millions of players globally, the burden of comparison with the Argentine star was heavy for a promising Spanish player who was once considered Messi's successor in Barcelona.
Bojan Crickich tells the story of a player’s diary, who has gone from the lights of big leagues to the shadows of small teams in search of restoring glories that seemed promising at first.
His career began with the Barcelona's La Masia Academy, and made his way since he was seven years old and became the most prominent star among his peers and the brightest future in the eyes of coaches there.
A years-long career with youth teams, in which the talented player broke all numbers and scored more than eight hundred goals with all the groups he played for.
At the age of 17, the first team opened the doors to him, to be the youngest player in the history of Barcelona to score a goal in the league and the youngest player in the team to participate in the Champions League.
However, early success threw his weight on the boy who did not leave his teens, and Bojan described those moments as one of the most difficult periods of his life, as he moved during months of a boy who loves the ball and plays it passionately out of the limelight to an extraordinary star in Spain, the fans race to take pictures with him.
With the pressure he experienced due to the sudden fame, the comparisons with Messi came to place a heavier burden on the player, who has become demanding every match to prove his eligibility for the titles conferred on him.
Pressure reflected chronic anxiety of the player and prevented him from living normally for continuous days due to the frequent attacks that caused him headaches and constant fatigue.
One of the repercussions of those circumstances was his decision not to respond to the call-up of coach Luis Aragones to participate with the national team in the European Nations Cup (Euro 2008), despite the repeated urgency and the continuing demands on the part of the sporting director of the team at the time, Fernando Hiro, and Barcelona captain Carles Puyol.
Despite losing the opportunity to participate in winning the Euro 2008 title, Bojan believes that he made the appropriate decision at the time because he took advantage of a respite that helped him receive the appropriate assistance to get rid of his psychological problems and return to the right track with Barcelona.
With the continuous brilliance of Coach Pep Guardiola's battalion, difficulties increased for Bojan to kidnap a key position in an attack that included Messi at the side of David Villa and Pedro, to make a decision that I think is the most appropriate when he left the team in search of brilliance away from the walls of the club in which he learned the alphabet of the ball.
A first experience with Rome was unsuccessful, with a result that did not exceed seven goals in 37 games, then loaning to Milan for one season and then another season with Ajax the Dutch, so the march with this fluctuation continued and the player counted seven teams during eight years in which his market value moved from tens of millions of euros to the limits Only one million.
The 29-year-old, who last summer chose to take on a new challenge, moved to Montreal's Impact Canadian, who is competing for the American League, in search of a last chance to return to the lights that quickly receded from him.