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12 young players whose careers took off
For young players at big clubs, invariably stuck behind some of the world’s best players, it takes guts to leave in pursuit of first team football elsewhere. It doesn’t always work out but for some it provides an incredible boost to a career in the game, as these players prove.
No fewer than five featured here were bought back by the clubs they left at inflated prices, including a world record fee, two who returned to Barcelona, one to Real Madrid and one let go by Borussia Dortmund at 16 for being too skinny – only for the club to spend €17m to bring him back.
Marco Reus (Borussia Dortmund)
Dortmund-born Reus spent a decade at Westfalonstadion as a youngster but dropped into the Regional Leagues with Rot Weiss Ahlen as a 17-year-old after the club told him he was ‘too slight’ to make the step-up to the first team. It worked for Reus; after three seasons in Ahlen, Borussia Monchengladbach took him to the Bundesliga where he shone, scoring 18 times in the 2011/12 season as the Foals qualified for the Champions League.
BVB re-signed Reus for €17m in 2011 and he has remained with the club he supported growing up despite regular links with a move elsewhere – thanks in part to a patchy injury record.
Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (PSV)
Only 13 players have scored more goals for Ajax but it was at PSV Eindhoven that Huntelaar made his professional debut in 2002. It turned out to be his only appearance for the club, with his path to the first team blocked by the likes of Mateja Kezman and Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink. He spent the remainder of the 2002/03 season on loan at De Graafschap and the following campaign in the second division with AGOVV.
When his successful spell loan to the Apeldoorn club expired, he turned down the offer of a new deal at PSV and signed for Heerenveen on a permanent basis in 2004. His subsequent record of 39 goals in 60 games persuaded Ajax to fork out €9m for his services two years later.
Juan Mata (Real Madrid)
Mata started his career at Real Oviedo but moved to La Fabrica, Real Madrid’s academy, at the age of 15. He made his professional debut with Castilla in 2006 but before the end of the season he agreed to join Valencia after they activated his release clause. He joined shortly after his 19th birthday, helping the side to Copa del Rey success in his first season at the Mestalla, scoring four goals in eight appearances in the competition.
After helping Spain to World Cup glory in 2010, Mata moved to England, joining Chelsea for £23.5m. He scored in the final of Euro 2012, helping Spain to retain the trophy they won four years earlier.
Ron-Robert Zieler (Man United)
In hindsight, United may regret the decision to allow Zieler to leave the club in the summer of 2010, even though it was highly unlikely the German international would have ousted Edwin van der Sar as No.1.
He never made an appearance for United’s first team and two loan appearances for Northampton were all he had to show for his five years in England.
Zieler joined Hannover after failing to make the breakthrough under Sir Alex Ferguson, and went on to play almost 200 times in the Bundesliga before moving to Leicester in the summer of 2016. After a season in the East Midlands, the World Cup winner headed home to Germany with Stuttgart.
Loic Remy (Lyon)
France international Remy was promoted to the Lyon first team in 2005 but struggled to make an impact under successive managers Gerard Houllier and Alain Perrin, making just a handful of appearances. Lyon were the dominant force in French football at the time, with the likes of Sylvain Wiltord, Brazilian Fred, Milan Baros and a young Karim Benzema ahead of Remy. After a loan spell at Lens, he signed for Nice on a permanent basis in 2008 for a club record €8m, scoring 26 league goals in 68 appearances.
The striker went on to represent Marseille, QPR and Newcastle before signing for Chelsea in summer 2014. He's now at Getafe, on loan from Las Palmas, in Spain.
Samuel Eto'o (Real Madrid)
Cameroonian striker Eto’o scored over 100 goals in five seasons with Barcelona, helping the Catalan side to three league titles and two Champions League trophies before moving to Inter. It was on the other side of the Clasico divide that Eto’o began his career, though, playing three times for Real Madrid in La Liga. He spent time on loan at Leganes, Espanyol and Mallorca before joining the latter permanently in 2000.
Barça brought Eto'o to Catalonia four years later for €24m, and he went on to become a key player under both Frank Rijkaard and Pep Guardiola. He became the first player to win two continental trebles when he won league, cup and Champions League with Inter in 2010 having achieved it the previous year with Barcelona.
Paul Pogba (Man United)
Pogba joined United first time round in 2009 from the famed youth academy at Le Havre, responsible for the formation of such talents as Benjamin Mendy, Vikash Dhorasoo and Dmitri Payet. He grew frustrated at a lack of first-team appearances in Manchester and joined Juventus three years later on a free transfer, refusing to sign a new contract at Old Trafford.
Four league titles, including two doubles and a Champions League final later, the French international re-signed for United for a then world record fee in 2016, helping them to a League Cup and Europa League double in his first season back in England.
Cesc Fabregas (Barcelona)
Born in the province of Barcelona, Fabregas sensed his opportunities with Barça’s first team would be limited and joined Arsenal in September 2003, making his debut in a League Cup tie the following month. At 16 years and 177 days old, he became the club’s youngest-ever first team player. He established himself at Arsenal, being given the captaincy in 2009 but left London two years later to re-join his boyhood club, where he won a league title in 2013.
Ryan Shawcross (Man United)
Stoke City signed Shawcross from Manchester United in 2008 for a fee of £1m. The central defender initially joined the Potters on a six-month loan deal but such was his impact, Stoke sought to make the deal permanent in the following January transfer window.
Shawcross has been in the Potteries ever since, winning the club captaincy and an England cap along the way – although it later transpired that Sir Alex Ferguson did his best to stop the move.
"He wanted me to sign a new contract and then go out on loan," Shawcross recalled. "I wanted to end my career with over 500 games, and if I’d have stayed at United that wouldn’t have happened."
Alvaro Morata (Real Madrid)
Alvaro Morata crossed Madrid as a youngster, swapping Atletico for Real via Getafe. But he never established himself in the first team at the Bernabeu, with all bar three of his 23 appearances in the 2013/14 season coming from the bench. Juventus signed him in the summer of 2014 for €20m and he won a double Double, helping the Old Lady to two Scudetti and two Coppa Italia triumphs.
The Madrid hierarchy had insisted on a buy-back clause when he joined the Italian giants and activated it in the summer of 2016, but Morata was unable to take Karim Benzema’s place in the team despite scoring 20 goals in all competitions. A move to Chelsea last summer has seen Morata notch 10 league goals to date despite failing to really impress in London.
Adrien Rabiot (Man City)
Rabiot spent six unhappy months at Manchester City’s academy in 2008, but failed to settle with his mother later claiming that he had been mistreated. The Paris-born midfielder had spent seven years with Creteil before his short spell in England and was eventually picked up in 2012 by hometown club PSG, where he has established himself as one of Europe’s finest young midfielders.
Still only 22, he’s played over 100 matches for the Parisians and has been capped by the national team at every level from U16 to the full side, making his debut for Les Bleus in 2016 against Ivory Coast. Rabiot thought he'd got his own back when he scored against the Citizens in a crunch Champions League tie in April 2016. Unfortunately for the PSG man, though, Manuel Pellegrini's side prevailed and advanced to the semi-finals.
Gerard Pique (Man United)
Having made just 23 first-team appearances in four years at Manchester United, and finding himself stuck behind arguably the Premier League's greatest-ever centre-back duo of Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic, Pique opted to re-join his boyhood club Barcelona in 2008. He picked up Premier League and Champions League winners medals in Manchester but making the move back to the city of his birth was to prove even more successful.
A decade later and with six La Liga titles, three Champions Leagues and a host of other trophies – not to mention a World Cup and a European Championship with Spain – Pique would’ve been cheap at 10 times the £5m Barcelona spent to re-sign him.
