10 Real Madrid Rejects Who Made It Big Elsewhere

3. Gonzalo Higuain

French-born Argentinean Gonzalo Higuain played a fair number of matches and scored a glut of goals – 107 in La Liga – for Real Madrid during his seven-year stretch at the club.

However, his appearances would often come from the bench, as he would be forced to play second fiddle to the latest Galactico signing. It could be suggested that Real knew exactly what they had in Higuain, yet still couldn’t resist bringing in another superstar to overshadow the eager striker.

This feeling of never quite being first option up-front led to the South American becoming fed up and ready for a move, which duly occurred when he joined Napoli for £34.5 million in the same 2013 transfer window as Merengues team-mate Jose Callejon.

He later admitted that the decision to leave Real made him so upset that he cried. But he, like others, found the height of expectation borne out by the crowd’s whistling of their own players too much to handle.

Higuain had two steady seasons in Naples before equalling Gino Rossetti’s all-time goalscoring record for a single Serie A campaign when hitting 36 goals in just 35 appearances. Then, he did the unthinkable by leaving for Juventus, who met his extraordinary €90 million (euro) buy-out clause.

The hungry forward was ridiculed after turning up for pre-season training in an overweight state, yet the laughing died down as he began racking up the goals to end the term with 24 strikes in 38 league matches, whilst assisting the Turin giants to an ultimately disappointing Champions League final against his old employers Real Madrid.