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Barcelona have enjoyed a stellar start to the new season, with a brilliant frontline being complemented by an equally effective defensive line.
Indeed, the central defensive pairing of Inigo Martinez and Pau Cubarsi have done a brilliant job so far. And things are only expected to get better as Ronald Araujo and Andreas Christensen slowly continue their recovery.
However, the Barcelona defence may have had another star player in the ranks, if they had heeded the recommendation of Bojan Krkic, who is the father of former Barça prodigy Bojan.
Barcelona rejected the opportunity to sign van de Ven
At least that is the narrative given by Bojan Krkic himself, in El Bar, a program hosted by Sique Rodriguez.
In the show, Bojan Krkic, a former Barcelona scout, revealed that he had the chance to see defender Micky van de Ven during the nascent stages of his career.
Bojan was monitoring van de Ven’s performance in a Dutch second-division game between Volendam and AZ Alkmaar. He was mightily impressed by the defender’s performance.
Micky van de Ven has become a defensive leader at Tottenham (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)
“They told me that he was growing a lot, so I went to see him at the next match. That same week, they did physical tests in training and it turned out that the centre-back, van de Ven, was faster than Kylian Mbappe,” he said (h/t Cadena SER).
Why did Barcelona not sign van de Ven?
Bojan added that he was so impressed by van de Ven’s performance that he informed Barcelona about the Dutch defender.
However, the Catalans did not opt to sign the youngster for just €3 million due to ‘sporting issues’. The decision was taken by then sporting director Eric Abidal and director Ramon Planes.
Due to Barcelona’s hesitancy and passivity, VfL Wolfsburg nabbed the chance to sign van de Ven in 2021, paying a fee of €8 million.
Two years later, the German outfit would bag a significant profit by selling the defender to Tottenham for a fee of €40 million.
