Hailed by his country as Messi: ex-wonderkid can’t find a club
While Croatia face England in the Nations League tonight from 6 p.m., Alen Halilovic may well be sitting in front of the TV cheering on his country. Of course, we can’t know that for sure. What we do know is this: just a few years ago, plenty of experts would have expected the 30-year-old to be out on the pitch tonight, leading the Croatians as one of their absolute stars. Halilovic a star?
Admittedly, from today’s perspective that claim seems more than questionable. Far from football’s biggest stage, the attacking midfielder has spent recent years playing for smaller clubs. After spells at Reading (Championship) and HNK Rijeka (Croatian top flight), he moved to the Eredivisie in 2023.
At Fortuna Sittard, Halilovic initially established himself as a regular starter before things completely fell apart last season. Plagued by injuries, the Croatian managed a total of just 30 minutes of playing time over the course of a year. Even when fit, he was often left with nothing more than a full 90 minutes on the bench. On five occasions, Halilovic did not even make the matchday squad. Then came the next setback in the summer.
Sittard did not renew Halilovic’s contract, a player once dubbed by the football world as the Croatian Messi or the new Modrić. And not without reason.
When Halilovic joined FC Barcelona in 2014, he had long since become a hero at Dinamo Zagreb. At 16, he became the youngest goalscorer in the club’s history and also made his debut for the Croatian national team.
Much like Messi, the 1.69-meter-tall Halilovic impressed with his extreme agility and his ability to create chances out of nothing. The hype surrounding him, however, was not always positive.
“I was just a kid who enjoyed playing football, but after a while, whenever I had a poor performance, people started pointing fingers at me. People had forgotten that I was still a child and only 16 or 17 years old,” Halilovic told The Athletic in 2024, speaking about his early days in Barcelona.
But it was not only the outside pressure that made things difficult for the now 30-year-old: “I realized that Luis Enrique didn’t want me there.”
Halilovic made just a single appearance for Barcelona’s first team before the Catalans sold him to Hamburger SV in the summer of 2016 — despite a strong loan season as a regular starter at Sporting Gijón. If you’re a die-hard Bundesliga fan and still don’t remember him, there’s no need to be embarrassed.
Halilovic played just seven matches for HSV before, after a loan spell, he joined Las Palmas permanently in the summer of 2017. Both former HSV coach Bruno Labbadia and his successor Markus Gisdol had previously criticized the Croatian’s insufficient defensive qualities. Die Welt called him HSV’s “greatest misunderstanding.”
A brutal verdict, when you consider that Halilovic was still only 20 at the time. And yet it seems to have left its mark on the Croatian. Instead of a world-class career at FC Barcelona, there followed ten club changes and a transformation from wonderkid into a professional who can no longer find a club. And instead of a new Modrić, it is the “old” Modrić who will be on the pitch for Croatia today when they take on England in the Nations League.
This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.
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