Former Barcelona forward Bojan Krkic has opened up on the anxiety that he used to suffer from after becoming a wonderkid in the senior team, explaining that his ‘body couldn’t handle it’.
Bojan has been public about the damage that stardom did to his mental health, suffering panic attacks for many years. During a documentary on his career, he admits that he enjoyed relatively few parts of his career in football, ‘as bad as it sounds’.
“He couldn’t go out. He had anxiety and took anti-anxiety pills to alleviate that symptoms,” those arround him commented, as per Relevo. “He used to go out with his hood up so people didn’t recognise him.”
“His emergence into the elite was not easy at all. Expectations were very high after being the greatest scorer in the history of cule youth football. He didn’t know how to manage the pressure and any comments he received, he saw the negative not the positive,” tells Ruben Bonastre, a coordinator of the programme at La Masia for 16 years until 2017.
“My body did not tolerate that change of identity at 17 years old. A boy from the village who in a period of a month and a half becomes a public figure. It made me very happy to be able to debut in the first team, but at the same time everything that that generated, my body didn’t accept it,” Bojan himself admits.
He also told the story of how his Barcelona spell came to an end. The story goes that with Bojan recovering from an injury, Pep Guardiola told him that if he made it back in time, then he would play some part in the Champions League final against Manchester United in 2011. However Ibrahim Afellay was sent on in the dying moments, not Bojan.
“I only asked to play even if it were three minutes. I would have been very happy.”
“I don’t want to create controversy with Guardiola. What happened is already past and the reality is that I didn’t play in the final. I don’t want to speak badly about Pep. When I spoke to Guardiola, the words didn’t come out. I had so much inside that I didn’t know how to get it out,” he explains when it came time to ask the Manchester City coach for an exit.
Now part of the Barcelona setup, Bojan is charged with monitoring their loanees, and also providing support to young players in or around the senior side, having experienced the worst of it himself. He was even critical of Barcelona’s approach with some of their young stars, including Lamine Yamal.
