Aleksandr Hleb was a signing that failed to live up to expectation at Barcelona, having arrived from Arsenal for 15 million euros, but the Belarusian has made some bold declarations about what he discovered upon arriving at the Blaugrana in 2008.
He played just 36 games during his four-year spell with the club, though was part of Pep Guardiola's squad during the 2008/09 campaign before going on loan to Stuttgart, Birmingham City and Wolfsburg.
However, Hleb openly discussed his time in Catalonia on Belarusian television and named and shamed a couple of players.
"Ronaldinho and Deco turned up drunk to training," Hleb stated on the programme 'Skameika osnovij' on 'Belorusski Futbol'.
"You know why Barcelona sold them in 2008? Because they were afraid they would ruin [Lionel] Messi."
What is striking, though, is that Hleb's time at Barcelona never overlapped with either Deco or Ronaldinho. Deco had joined Chelsea in June of that year, while Ronaldinho was moved on to AC Milan in July, shortly before Hleb arrived at the Camp Nou.
The 38-year-old also claimed that he never wanted to play for the Catalan side.
"I didn't want to sign for Barcelona, I wanted to stay at Arsenal or join Bayern [Munich]," said Hleb.
"But my agent insisted that Guardiola had called again, and in the end..."
shray_srivastava
81
Why were we successful then, because we had People in the administration department with Guts to make a final call, is there anybody left in there, who make calls like these? Taking important calls such as moving Suarez & Rakitic & re-juvenating the squad, because if you use your head then this is the last year that we can expect a decent fee for them, or else from next season they will be 33 & some may not even pay €10m for each.
FreeAgent10
66
Ronaldinho had such a big influence on Messi at that time and Messi was still developing so it's natural that the club was concern. They didn't want Messi to take up drinking so Dinho had to go along with Deco. It turned out to be a good decision.