Bojan, the anxious wonderkid, is back at Barcelona guiding next generation

The teenage sensation missed his Spain debut because of a panic attack but hopes to offer youngsters the type of support he received from Ibrahimovic, Henry and others

The plane had started to taxi towards the runway when Bojan Krkic told the flight attendant he was sorry, he couldn’t travel. It was July 2014, he was 23 and he had signed for Stoke for €1.8m, finally severing ties with Barcelona, his “home” where he became the youngest player in their history and had worked to overcome the anxiety attacks that conditioned his career. But he couldn’t do it. “She can see it’s real and asks the pilot not to take off,” he recalls. The plane turned round and went back to the terminal.

“We didn’t tell Stoke what had happened; I don’t remember if we told them I’d missed the flight or if there was a problem with the papers. It was a trauma: I still find it hard to fly alone because of what happened that day. But I knew I had to; there was no other option,” Bojan says, and the next day he was back again. By the time he landed, things looked better. “Stoke were in a hotel in Germany for pre-season and I remember as soon as I got there I had the feeling that there was light.”