“It’s true that Laporta tried signing me to Barca in 2003 but they couldn’t come to a deal with Ajax and went on to sign Frank Rijkaard. It’s true that things could have been different for me and Barca,” Ronald Koeman said in an interview with Marca in 2016.
Joan Laporta approached Ajax over Koeman shortly after becoming Barcelona’s president in 2003. Rijkaard was appointed instead while Koeman has gone on to work at Benfica, PSV, Valencia, AZ, Feyenoord, Southampton, Everton, Netherlands and now Barca.
“I’d pay to train those players,” Koeman said in the same interview about Luis Enrique’s side who had won the Champions League in 2015.
”It’d be great to have them in your squad. You don’t really have to teach them much. They know exactly what they have to do. You just have to get them to play together and respect each other, and that’s what Luis Enrique has achieved.”
