Bolton Wanderers’ £7m Barcelona transfer failure haunted the Trotters | OneFootball

Bolton Wanderers tried to sign Thiago Alcantara permanently from Barcelona in the summer of 2011 but couldn't get a deal over the line.

Back in the summer of 2011, Bolton Wanderers were chasing then-Barcelona youngster Thiago Alcântara for the majority of the transfer window but, much like Rivaldo a few years earlier, it was a star-centred saga that would not go the way of the Trotters.

At the time, Thiago had broken through into the Barcelona first-team, coached by Pep Guardiola, and made 17 appearances for the Blaugrana in the 2010/11 campaign as they won both La Liga and the UEFA Champions League once again.

The then-20-year-old Brazilian-born went to play at the 2011 UEFA European Under-21 Championships in Denmark that summer and was a part of the UEFA Team of the Tournament as Spain won the competition.

That was the pedigree that Bolton were after having just reached an FA Cup semi-final at Wembley Stadium the previous season, as well as flirting with a top four or at least top six finish for the vast majority of the campaign before a poor end to the season beginning with a 5-0 loss to Stoke City in that aforementioned cup semi.

Instead of the arrival of a man destined to become one of European football’s most sought-after and decorated midfielders to the Reebok Stadium, Wanderers’ transfer window and subsequent season went awry, and Bolton fans will be left thinking about what could have been.

Bolton’s bizarre back-up business

In a summer that saw Bolton seeking to build on a positive couple of years under Owen Coyle and looking to become more sustainable in their challenge for the European spots once again in the top-flight, they were ambitious in targeting Thiago Alcântara.

However, when the £7 million deal for the Arsenal and Chelsea-linked midfielder eventually failed as he stayed with Barca, Wanderers’ reaction in terms of their next options on the list seemed quite bizarre to supporters.

Rather than even going for the same profile of player stylistically, not just in terms of quality and reputation, Wanderers’ only midfield signings for the rest of that season were the free transfers of Darren Pratley and Nigel Reo-Coker from Swansea City and Aston Villa respectively.

Bolton, who were already set to be without Stuart Holden for at least the season and already had the injury-prone Mark Davies as part of their midfield group, then had further issues in the middle of the pitch in pre-season with Lee Chung-yong suffering a leg-break.

With injuries to Holden, Davies and Lee, as well as Fabrice Muamba suffering a cardiac arrest during the 2011/12 campaign, and the departures of other midfielders such as Tamir Cohen and Matty Taylor during the summer of 2011, Wanderers’ entire successful midfield from the previous campaign was ripped apart.

Thiago appeared to be an excellent possibility for Bolton, or at least surely someone of the ilk of Thiago if they couldn’t get what was an unlikely deal over the line – instead the club went in a very different direction.

Opposite directions for Thiago and Bolton

That very different direction perhaps highlighted the lack of joined-up thinking from the genuinely brilliant servants to the club within the hierarchy of the likes of chairman Phil Gartside and owner Eddie Davies.

A more old-fashioned approach to recruitment in that regard eventually saw the demise of Bolton and the club were relegated on the final day of the 2011/12 season with a 2-2 draw away at the aforementioned Stoke.

Since then, Bolton have seen themselves drop all the way to the fourth-tier and are now chasing the top six in League One with a top-flight campaign that is something of an unrealistic pipedream.

Links to someone such as Thiago Alcântara now appear ludicrous with the now-retired former Spain international having won four La Liga titles, seven Bundesliga titles, one Copa del Rey, four DFB-Pokal trophies, one FA Cup, two Supercopa de Espana trophies, two DFL-Supercups, the Community Shield, two UEFA Champions League titles, the UEFA Super Cup and two FIFA Club World Cups.

Instead of getting a player like that over the line in the summer of 2011, Wanderers settled for journeymen free transfers, and it is no surprise, albeit extremely regretful, to see how the next 12 months and then subsequent 14 years have gone.