🤬 Barcelona's greatest villains: Luís Figo | OneFootball

Luís Figo was everything to Barcelona fans.

Signed for just £2.2m, he adopted Catalonia as his home. And it adopted him, as it had adopted Barça-icon Johan Cruyff before him.

It was one thing when Catalans like Pep Guardiola supported the political cause. It was another entirely when someone came from the outside and adopted it with pride. Figo did just that.

Just failed to win the league first time in five years and, during his five years, it was tricky. Cruyff had his final season and left, the glorious team of the late 1990s changed a lot. Ronaldo came and went.

By 1999/2000, only three players from Figo’s first season – the Portguese himself, Pep Guardiola, and Abelardo Fernandez – remained.

Figo would often captain the team and was, truly, its talisman. He was the future.

The Portuguese starred in the 1997 Cup Winners’ Cup win. Ronaldo left, but Figo stayed. He stayed and frequently captained the side that won the Uefa Super Cup and the domestic double in 1998. He scored two in the Copa del Rey final win at the Bernabéu. And led Barcelona to the title again in 1999.

But Catalonia’s favourite son was about to become its biggest villain.

Set to win the Ballon d’Or (he was awarded it months after his switch to the Bernabéu), Real Madrid paid the Portuguese’s release clause.

Rumours had spread that Figo had signed an agreement to join Real Madrid if Florentino Pérez won the club’s presidential election. He denied those reports, but when Pérez shockingly did win, they turned out to be true.

The pre-signed agreement meant Figo would have to pay Madrid £22m if Pérez did indeed win the election and the Portuguese refused the move. If Pérez lost, Figo could stay at Camp Nou and would be paid £1.7m by Madrid nonetheless.

But Pérez upset the odds, Figo arrived for a world record €62m fee, and the Galácticos project was born.

Just four months later, he returned to Barcelona in a Real Madrid shirt for the first time.

He was greeted by banners at Camp Nou calling him a “traitor”, “scum”, “Judas”. And a deafening chorus of boos and whistles, forcing him to put his fingers in his ears when he came onto the pitch. Madrid’s regular corner taker, Figo let somebody else preside over the set-pieces. The fear was so great that the rage would spill over onto the pitch if he was too close.

By 2002 he was back on corner duty and, two years on, the anger was still so raw that he infamously had a now-iconic pigs’ head thrown at him.

Zinedine Zidane arrived one year after Figo. Ronaldo the year after him. David Beckham the following summer.

But the birth of the Galácticos project came with Figo and his move from one of the Clásico giants to the other.

From being one of their great players, he will, forever, be one of the most hated figures in Barcelona history.