On Saturday Sergi Samper returned to Camp Nou and for the first time he entered that stadium wearing another shirt than the one of FC Barcelona. It was the first time in his life that he played against “his” club.

He did it playing for Granada, the team dead last in La Liga, and he did it coming of the bench. Last weekend he wasn’t even in the squad and on Saturday he was only subbed on after his childhood friend Jon Toral had been forced to leave the pitch injured.

Still when Sergi Samper entered the pitch at the Camp Nou he did so as the home fans chanted his name. Because in Barcelona Sergi Samper isn’t just anyone, he isn’t just an ex-La Masia player who never lived up to the expectations. In fact they haven’t given up on him yet.

So how have Sergi Samper ended up there, at the Granada bench?

Everyone who knows me or follows me on twitter know that I have a soft spot for Sergi Samper, that I regard him the best youth player I’ve ever seen play the game. Ever since I first saw him play in his early teens, there was something very special, he read the game in a way a kid his age shouldn’t be able to. In a way I had only seen very few professional players do. I wouldn’t say I know better than anyone else, but having followed Samper and his development for years, seeing games both live and on tv. I do believe I have been able to paint a quite good picture on how it all has lead to the situation he is currently in.

I’m going to do my best to explain what has happened and why Sergi Samper can still reach his full potential and become one of the best defensive midfielders in the world.

In order to do that I have decided to divide this article into four categories:

Background – who is Sergi Samper?

The problem of his position – Defensive midfielder.

The mismanagement of Barça B – Why he didn’t “play” for two years.

Granada – Why he went and what went wrong.

Background – who is Sergi Samper?

Coming up through Barcelona’s youth academy La Masia, Sergi Samper was always a special player. For his coaches, for the club. He was the first one to make his debut at Camp Nou not having played for another club in his life, joining the blagurana at the age of six.

He captained every Barça youth team that he played for and was always the heart of ever team, the player that made it all tick. Doing so the generation of 1995 at La Masia were almost unstoppable.

“Never in my life have I seen a player at six years of age possess such an understanding and feeling for team play,” Samper’s first coach at Barça, Andrés Carassco told Sport in an interview, as he stated: “At that age most kids just wants to score goals, and he scored too but already then was he an incredible team player, that’s not normal.”

La Masia is and has always been full of extraordinary talents, still Samper was always something else. He was talked about but not in the way other talents were talked about, he wasn’t “hyped”. With Samper it was never a surprise, it was never a overnight sensation. It was just Samper, that kid who’d always been at the club, who worked in the quiet, not liking the spotlight. But the kid everyone following the youth teams at La Masia knew was the heart of it all. For Samper playing for Barça at Camp Nou was a dream, for everyone who saw him play it was inventible.

“For me Samper isn’t just a footballer, he is the ultimate footballer”, one of his La Masia coaches, Sergi Domènech once told RAC 1.

In 2010 the Barcelona Cadete team, lead by Samper, was winning everything. They were simply unstoppable and as they lifted the Nike Premier Cup at Old Trafford – crowned the best U15 side in the world – people were taking notes more than anyone else Arsene Wenger was taking notes.

The Arsenal manager was quick to point out to his club that there were three kids at Barça they had to sing. Jon Toral, Hector Bellerín and Sergi Samper. Toral who has an English mother and always dreamt of playing in the Premier League wasn’t hard to convince. While Barça didn’t put in too much of an effort to make Bellerín stay, as the club’s priority was to keep Samper.

Toral and Bellerín were good players but Samper was the one they just couldn’t lose. Even though his best friend, Toral, would leave, for Samper the thought never even crossed his mind. He’s always been a Barça kid through and through. Even so the club couldn’t leave anything to chance.

At 15, still a very long way from the first team, Sergi Samper was called in to the office of Josep Guardiola. The Barça first team coach had as so many others at the club seen how special this kid was and took it upon himself to assure that Samper stayed.

He stayed and with every game he played he got better and better, earning himself the chance to at times train with the first team of Guardiola.

“His understanding for the game is perfection, he is everywhere and knows exactly when to change the pace of the game”, his coach at Spain U17, Santi Denía once told Marca.

Samper eventually reached the first team at FC Barcelona getting his debut under Luis Enrique. Though it wasn’t the normal debut. Instead of coming of the bench for a few minutes, Samper started the game, a Champions League game. He was 19.

“I know Samper well and he has that character to go out in a Champions League game, make his debut, play 90 minutes and only make one single mistake, which for that matter was insignificant,” Luis Enrique told reporters after the game.

Samper had been nearly flawless, making more passes, 107 of them, than anyone else on the pitch. Everything was going as planned, it seemed.

But three years later and he’s warming the bench of Granada.

The problem of his position: Defensive midfielder.

A fantastic debut so what happened and why didn’t Luis Enrique give Samper more chances?

In total Samper played in 11 official games for the Barcelona first team: 1 in La Liga, 6 in Copa del Rey, 1 in the Spanish supercup and 3 in the Champions League.

Was he awful in those game? no he wasn’t. So Luis Enrique is the one to blame? No not specifically.

The easiest thing would be to blame Luis Enrique, to blame him for not giving Samper more chances and therefore not reaching his full potential. It’s easy to draw the conclusion that it is Lucho’s fault. But is it?

Here we have to remember that Sergi Samper is a defensive midfielder. That at Barcelona the defensive midfielder is the heart of the team, the most vital player, the player that makes it all tick.

A defensive midfielder, a player like Samper, can’t just get 5, 10, 15 minutes in a game. He won’t be able to do anything with that, it’s useless. A young forward you can put on for a few minutes, then some more and then some more. You can take it little at a time. It’s more difficult with a offensive midfielder even more so with a defender but with a defensive midfielder it’s something else.

When a defensive midfielder takes the step up from the B-team to the first team he needs minutes. He needs to play 90 minute games, he needs to understand his teammates and he needs them to trust him. That’s why we seldom see defensive midfielders making that step in a club as big as FC Barcelona, because the quality that the player has to possess to be able to make that big of a step and the insane risk the coach have to take for that to work.

That’s why Luis Enrique gave Samper 90 minutes in his debut, not 10, not 15 but 90 minutes. That’s why Samper played in the starting elven in seven of the eleven games he played in for the Barça first team. It’s also the reason why he didn’t play more. The risk for Luis Enrique was just too big.

Johan Cruyff took that risk with Josep Guardiola. In that case Roland Koeman who played in the position was out injured. Cruyff decided against signing a replacement and took a big risk playing the 19-year old youth team player. The risk payed of and Guardiola became a key player, leading the team to their first ever European Cup win two years later.

Josep Guardiola later also took that risk, an even bigger one than Cruyff had taken with him. Pep did it with Sergio Busquets. A player the club had decided wasn’t good enough to stay when Pep first took over the B-team in 2007. Guardiola thought different and made Busquets his key player. Then in his second game as first team coach he decided to put Yaya Touré on the bench for the 20-year-old Busquets. At that time had Busi never played on a higher level than the Spanish fourth division, he had never played a professional football game. He became Guardiola’s key player and that season they won six out of six trophies.

When promoting a defensive midfielder from the B-team to the first team at a club like FC Barcelona you need to play him, you need to put him on the spot from the start. Cruyff did it with Pep and Pep did it with Busi. Though for Lucho the situation was harder because the player he had in that position was Sergio Busquets – the best defensive midfielder in the world.

Putting Busquets on the bench for Samper, just didn’t really make sense, how good Samper even was. Obviously there is ways to keep both, one idea would be to rest Busquets in less important games and play Samper.

Though what happened in the Barça B team made it difficult for Luis Enrique to put that trust in Samper, because it’s a big trust for a 19-20 year-old. The trust to direct one of the best football teams in the world.

The mismanagement of Barça B – Why he didn’t “play” for two years

It was difficult for Luis Enrique to put his trust in Samper because at Barça B Samper didn’t play. He played, he was on the pitch but he didn’t play.

Sergi Samper, like Xavi or like Busquets is dependent on his teammates. A forward can shine on his own so can a defender, but a defensive midfielder cannot. The role of a defensive midfielder is to make the team play, for that he needs the team. At Barça B Samper didn’t have a team.

When Sandro Rosell took over as president at FC Barcelona the club changed and La Masia changed. Important people at the youth set-up was replaced and somewhere along the line the youth players went from being people, students to become investments, products. Family became company.

At Barça B under the coach Eusebio Sacristan the focus shifted from being about the development of the players to be about the results. No player was damaged by this more than Sergi Samper.

When Samper reached the B-team in 2013, there were already big concerns. The results were coming but the development for many youth-players in the team seemed to have stalled. With the so called “backbone players” taking their places. (You can read more on the topic here: http://www.insidespanishfootball.com/155740/fall-barca-b-went-wrong/)

Sergi Samper, Grimaldo, Munir, Sandro, Denis Suarez, Dongou, Bagnack and Adama Traoré just to name a few, on paper it looked like a fantastic team.

They were also off to a great start, ending the 2013-14 season with the best league finish in club history. The beginning of the second season started well too, especially for Samper. Leading his side to a 4-1 victory over newly relegated La Liga team Real Zaragoza, the opponent coach Victor Muñoz was so impressed he after the game stated that “Samper isn’t just good enough to play in La Liga he is good enough to play for a team like Barcelona in La Liga.”

However the concerns among those following the Barça B team, that things in fact were going in the wrong direction, soon turned legit.

Only focusing on the results Eusebio was slowing losing his team. Even though it had been evident that several youth player’s development had stalled under Eusebio, the fact that results had been good was the only thing the club board cared about. But during the 2014-15 season, despite having one of the most talented B-teams the club ever had, Eusebio’s team was losing.

The second time they played Zaragoza that season things had changed drastically. Samper and Adama were benched because they had “acted like teenagers” Eusebio said. By this time the coach had lost the confidence of his team. More than that, there was no longer a team. It was every man for himself.

Last in the league table Eusebio was eventually fired and Jordi Vinyals took over, but few changes were made.

As everyone was playing for themselves and not together, Sergi Samper could do nothing. He was on the pitch, but he wasn’t playing because he didn’t have anyone to play with. The team was that broken, that lost.

Samper is dependent on his teammates and without them he couldn’t make the team play, so he couldn’t play.

The Barça B team was eventually relegated to the Spanish third division. Samper could have left the club then and he probably should have, at least on loan. But he didn’t want to for the same reason he didn’t leave when he was 15. His dream is and always have been to play for Barcelona.

If that meant he had to play in the third division, when in fact he was good enough for La Liga, then be it.

So Samper stayed and played in a division he is too good for. With players who isn’t at the level he needs them to be. In short, Sergi Samper spent two-thee years not playing. Being on the pitch but not playing, because he couldn’t, he didn’t have the means that his game need.

So how could Luis Enrique put his trust in a kid that didn’t play?

Granada – Why he went and what went wrong

Despite all this, at Barcelona they still know that Samper is special. So this summer he was finally promoted to the first team. Though the above problems were still there, he hadn’t played “for real” in two years and he is still a defensive midfielder.

In fact the risk of playing Samper in the first team two years ago was a smaller one than doing it now.

So Luis Enrique sat down with Samper and together they decided that the best thing would be for him to go on loan. They also together decided that Granada was the right place.

Never having played for another club, never having lived away from his hometown, there was a lot of things to consider when choosing the club. The fact that Jon Toral was going to Granada on loan from Arsenal played in.

Samper and Toral have kept in contact over the years, visiting each other as soon they got the chance. With Toral at Granada, the adaption to a new life a new city would be easier.

Then there was the footballing aspect. It had to be a team where Samper would play, were he’d be in the starting eleven. It needed to be a team that played the way that suited his game, all for him to develop. After two years he needed to be able to play his game again.

Paco Jémez had just signed for Granada, a coach always wanting to play the possession game, a coach not afraid of risks. And he wanted Samper, he asked for Samper. It seemed ideal.

So Lucho and Samper decided together that Granada it is.

Samper went straight into the starting eleven of Paco Jémez. However things haven’t exactly panned out as planned. Paco Jémez took too many risks and was soon fired.

New coach Lucas Alcaraz plays a different type of football and Sergi Samper dosen’t fit in. So there we are now, and there he is: on the bench.

Ahead of the game on Saturday, Luis Enrique said that “We aren’t thinking about getting Samper back this winter, but if the player and club think it’s for the best, we’ll see…”

Samper had better offers than a loan spell at Granada. Arsenal were still interested, so were Josep Guardiola’s Manchester City. But Samper wants to play for Barça, that’s why he went to Granada. So that he could stay in La Liga, so he could get ready to play for FC Barcelona.

At Barcelona that should also be the objective, to get Samper ready again, ready for Barça. If that’s the case, which I really hope it is, taking him back this winter would probably be for the best. Taking him back to find him a better fit.

He still needs the time to get back on track and he needs the right circumstances to do so. Right now those dosen’t seem to be at Granada, they’re not at Barcelona either.

With the right circumstances, I am confident, that Sergi Samper will become one of the best defensive midfielders in the world and he might even be able to compete with Sergio Busquets for the spot.

He just needs a team.

– Alexandra Jonson