Where are they now? 5️⃣ Barça flops who disappeared off the earth | OneFootball

They may be one of the biggest clubs in the world but even Barcelona have had their fair share of transfer mis-steps over the years.

If you think Antoine Griezmann has been underwhelming this season, that’s nothing compared to these lads …

Keirrison

There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of Keirrison but believe it or not, Barcelona once spent €14m on signing him from Palmeiras.

After he’d scored an incredible 41 goals in 58 games back in his homeland the previous year, the then 20-year-old Brazilian was immediately farmed out on loan to Benfica, where he made just seven appearances during the 2009/10 season.

The next few years would see him spend time on loan at Fiorentina, Santos, Cruzeiro and Coritiba before he eventually left Barça on a free transfer in 2014 having not made a single first-team appearance for the club.

And after bouncing between various clubs in Brazil and Portugal, he currently finds himself out in the cold as a free agent at the age of 31.

What a shame.

Douglas

But Keirrison is far from the only Brazilian to have flopped at Camp Nou.

In the summer of 2014, Barça splashed out a modest €4m on signing Douglas from São Paulo.

But the right-back became a figure of ridicule after a nightmare debut against Malaga, which would end up being one of just three LaLiga appearances he would make for the club.

In 2016 he was loaned to Sporting Gijon and after a season there, he was shipped off to Benfica and then Sivasspor.

Remarkably, his five-year contract only expired last summer and he finally left Barcelona having made a total of eight first-team appearances.

Now 29, he can be found warming the bench at Beşiktaş.

Alex Song

It was a transfer which promised so much, yet delivered so little.

In the summer of 2012, Barça spent a reported €19m on signing Song from Arsenal.

The Cameroonian was bought to play in both defence and midfield and in his two years at the club, he proved to be equally inept in both positions.

The nadir of his spell in Catalonia came when he mistakenly thought captain Carles Puyol was calling him over to lift the LaLiga trophy (Puyol was actually talking to Eric Abidal) and he spent the next two seasons on loan at West Ham.

A free transfer to Rubin Kazan followed in 2016 and at the age of 32, he now plays for Swiss side FC Sion.

Alexander Hleb

Barcelona probably should have already learned their lesson about signing players called Alex from Arsenal, however.

In 2008 they spent €17m on Belarusian midfielder Alexander Hleb, who had until that point been taking the Premier League by storm.

But he failed to score a single goal in 36 appearances for Barça and after spending time out on loan at Stuttgart, Birmingham City and Wolfsburg, he was eventually sold to Russian club Krylia Sovetov Samara.

Since then, Hleb appears to have been on a tour of Russian and Turkish football and following four separate spells at BATE Borisov, he’s still going strong at the age of 38 for Isloch Minsk Raion.

Yep, us neither.

Dmytro Chygrynskiy

Widely regarded as one of Barça’s strangest ever signings, it was Pep Guardiola who brought Chygrynskiy to Camp Nou from Shakhtar Donetsk in 2009.

But after spending a whopping €25m on him, the Ukrainian centre-back made just 14 appearances before he was sold back to Shakhtar for €15m the following summer.

Guardiola reportedly wanted to keep Chygrynskiy but incoming president Sandro Rosell insisted the club needed the money to pay debts.

He spent the next five years at Shakhtar before joining Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk in 2015.

Now 33, he is plying his trade in Greece for AEK Athens.