There are nearly 12 minutes gone when Andrés Iniesta receives the ball midway inside the Schalke half. An opposition defender approaches to check his forward momentum but Iniesta evades him and slides a pass into the path of Thierry Henry. The Frenchman opens his body to shoot.

Manuel Neuer saves but cannot hold on. Henry squares the rebound across the goal. Aged 17 years, seven months and four days, and still studying for his school exams, Bojan Krkic taps home the winning goal in a Champions League quarter-final.

Krkic had all the attributes we have come to expect from a La Masia graduate. He was skillful, he had wonderful balance, he was quick and he was a better dribbler than a baby with teething problems. He could score goals too. He joined the Catalan Club at the age of nine and within seven years he had over 850 to his name. Aged 15, he was joint top-scorer at the 2006 Under-17 European Championships. A year later and he scored the winning goal for Spain in the final of the same tournament.

He beat Lionel Messi’s record as the youngest player to score in La Liga for Barça by nearly eight-and-a-half months and soon after he became the first footballer born in the 1990s to play in the Champions League.

The compliments came in the almost the same numbers as the youth-team goals. “Bojan is a treasure,” purred the then Barcelona manager Frank Rijkaard. “There are only a few players who have a magical touch,” said Pep Guardiola, “and Bojan is one of them.” Some saw him as the new Messi. Others compared him to Raúl. Spain and Serbia – his father’s homeland; his mother is Catalan – fought for him to represent them. They both believed they needed him. So too did Barcelona.

The squad was overloaded with overloaded stars who had grown too comfortable and too complacent. There were whispers that injuries had been invented as excuses to leave out certain players and while Barcelona batted away rumours of Rijkaard’s demise, it became clear that the Dutchman was not much longer for the club. In stark contrast to that mess, here was this young star, untainted and with a smile that lit up like Tokyo at night. As Sid Lowe pointed out, one Spanish (and non-Catalan) newspaper even pictured him in a cape with his underpants on the outside and a B on his chest. Here was Krkic swooping to the rescue. In 2007/08 he made 48 appearance, scored 12 goals and set up another six. For a teenager to record such numbers for such a big club on his first season in La Liga is nothing short of miraculous.

But with great expectations comes great pressure and Krkic could not cope with it. He was called up to the Spain squad but he pulled out with a what was reported to be a panic attack. He was called up for Euro 2008 but once again he pulled out. He was, he said, “physically and emotionally shattered”. “Pressure was being heaped on very young shoulders,” wrote Lowe. “He’d gone from a 16-year-old inhabiting one world to a 17-year-old living somewhere completely different.”

“Overnight, I couldn’t even walk down the street,” Krkic said. “I couldn’t go to a birthday party or to the cinema.”

By the start of the 2008/09 season, there was a new man in change. The loss of the Dutch manager was a big blow for Krkic. “Rijkaard had complete trust in me,” he said. “He has a great personality. I had a relationship with him that I haven’t had with anyone else.” Under Pep Guardiola, Krkic fell behind in the pecking order and started to get fewer and fewer appearances, making less and less of an impact when he did play. This soon led to a falling out between him and Guardiola and after two more sparse seasons, Krkic would leave the club in 2011 without saying goodbye to him. “As a fan,” Krkic said, “Guardiola is the best coach in the world, but personal things that have happened to me [that] were hurtful. He was not fair with me on several occasions, and this is one of the reasons that I decided to leave.”

Roma seemed like an obvious choice. The man who had replaced Guardiola as the manager of the Barcelona B team, Luis Enrique, was in charge and the club’s owners were eager for the team to play in a way that Krkic was more than familiar with. “Luis Enrique represents an idea of football that we would like to follow which imposes itself today through Spain and Barcelona,” said Roma’s sporting director Walter Sabatini. At Roma, he had plenty of playing time to impress – he made 33 appearances in his first season, more than any other player that season – and in patches he did, scoring seven goals in his first season. However, his form was inconsistent and he failed to impose himself on games. Easy chances were often spurned and he was quickly overshadowed by other players within the squad. His lack of strength – not so much an issue in Spain – held him back and the suspicions about his lack of mental toughness raised their heads once more.

“There are a lot of strong personalities in Serie A and Bojan wasn’t one of them,” says Italian football correspondent Susy Campanale. “He was very quiet and seemingly lacking in confidence. He was also accustomed to a different tactical style and Spanish forwards have traditionally struggled in Italy. They are not accustomed to being marked so firmly and expect far more time and space on the ball than they’re allowed in Serie A. Bojan expected more than most. He needed to barge his way into the game a bit more but wanted to always have the classy move without the hard work that goes with it.”

The end of his first season at Roma saw Luis Enrique leave the club and Krkic soon followed him. He decided to try his luck with a loan move to Milan. He started just nine games – he made a further 14 appearances from the bench – scored just three goals and made the sort of impact on the Rossoneri that a fly has landing on a brown bear. It was the same old problems but he was not helped by his contract situation. “It was reported,” says Campanale, “that the clause in his contract meant Milan would have to buy him out permanently if he amassed a certain number of appearances, so towards the end of the season they simply stopped using him.” For a player in desperate need of a club to inject some confidence in him, that must have been a cruel blow.

From Milan, he continued his journey north, this time to Ajax. Like with his move to Roma, this seemed like the sensible option.

Historically, Ajax play the sort of possession and passing game that would suit Krkic’s style and the Eredivisie’s reputation was not built on the motto that ‘might is right’. “When Bojan was signed by Ajax, it was seen as quite a coup,” says Michiel Jongsma from BeNeFoot. “In Eredivisie measures, it was as if a superstar had arrived because usually the type of player that joins the league is a either a promising talent or an unknown player. In Bojan, they had the combination of a name well known in Europe and still the promise of someone who could go on to become a very good player.”

His performance in a pre-season friendly against Werder Bremen must have had Ajax fans rubbing their hands with glee. Stationed wide on the right, Krkic was a constant menace against the decent German opposition. He worked hard, combined well with his new team-mates, produced flick after trick, made some intelligent runs, set up one goal and scored another. But it was not long however before that glee evaporated into thin air. According to OptaJohan, it took him 665 playing minutes to score his first goal for the club – he would only add three more to his season’s tally – and although he had three assist in his first six league games, he would record no more for the season (by means of comparison, Christian Eriksen had five before he moved to Tottenham).

“I’m delighted for Bojan because he just does everything right on the field,” Rijkaard once said. “Every decision he takes is the right one.” At Ajax last season, his decision-making stood out but for the wrong reasons. “He starts dribbles when a pass would be more appropriate,” says Jongsma. “He has also found himself in decent positions to shoot but he waits for someone he could pass to.” All signs pointed to the return of those problems. Krkic’s dip in form has seen the fans turn on him too. From the player they expected major things from, he has become a player who is seen as a major impasse in the progression of youth team players.

“I’ve really enjoyed this season,” said Krkic, “and I have to evaluate the pros and cons.” So too will Ajax, or any club or manager who thinks they can revive the flagging fortunes of a player who was once had the world at his feet.