Owen Coyle unearthed a £1.6m gem who Bolton Wanderers let leave for free | OneFootball

Bolton secured a bargain deal to sign Marcos Alonso back in 2010, but never got any real benefit from his signing

There aren't too many ex-players in the history of Bolton Wanderers Football Club who will be able to retire and look back at their career saying they won pretty much everything they could've done, but Marcos Alonso is one of them.

Those of a certain age probably won't remember the glory days of Bolton when they were a regular fixture in the Premier League, and even the European stage at one point.

They're now widely regarded as a lower league club, plying their trade in League One, and even in League Two in the least five years, so they've had a monumental fall from grace.

The glory days brought around several club legends, the likes of Jay-Jay Okocha and Kevin Davies to name a couple, but one name who often slips under the radar because of his lack of success in the North West is Marcos Alonso.

He's a household name to most in England from his Chelsea days, while he's had success on the continent too, but his name is a taboo subject at Bolton, where he didn't get anywhere near hitting the heights he went on to in his career.

Bolton Wanderers poached a young talent from Real Madrid

Bolton poaching players from Real Madrid isn't something you hear too often, but it was a true story in 2010, when the then-Premier League Wanderers swooped to sign Alonso for a reported £1.6m fee.

Signed by Owen Coyle, Alonso moved as a Spanish U19 international, but had a tumultuous first season in the North West, while injury plagued his second campaign, and he ultimately played just five times as Bolton were relegated into the Championship.

You'd be forgiven at that point for expecting a player who turned out to have such a glittering career to have left in pursuit of top-flight football, but that wasn't the case with Alonso, who stayed and tried to get Bolton out of the second tier.

He featured heavily towards the end of the 2012/13 Championship campaign, but as he was just showing signs of improvement, the expiration of his contract proved a sucker-punch for Bolton, and Alonso departed for Fiorentina.

Such a high-profile move surprised many at the time, but looking back now, Fiorentina were fully justified in their show of faith.

Marcos Alonso won pretty much everything in club football after leaving Bolton Wanderers

Even Alonso's Fiorentina move wasn't entirely successful to begin with, as he ended up being loaned back to the Premier League with Sunderland, where he was a member of their 2013/14 side which finished as runners-up in the League Cup.

It was after his return to the Italian giants that his career really took off though, as he established himself as a regular in the Fiorentina side, helping them to a Europa League semi-final and successive top-four finishes in Serie A.

His form in Italy earned him a move to Chelsea, where he spent six successful seasons, winning the Premier League, Champions League, Europa League, FA Cup, Club World Cup and the Super Cup, while was twice more a runner in the League Cup.

It's hard to believe that the fresh-faced teenager Coyle signed back in 2010 would go onto have the kind of career he did, given he struggled to make the grade at Bolton initially, but spells in most of the top leagues in Europe suggest the Scottish boss has an eye for talent.