Barcelona star: from the summit of glory to the depths of hell

On 6 December 2025, Roony Bardghji returned to action after four straight matches on the bench, starting for the first team once Hansi Flick decided to push Lamine Yamal in behind centre-forward Ferran Torres, who scored three goals.

Yamal capped the goal festival with the fifth in a 5-3 win. The one before it, Barcelona's third, carried the Swede's signature.

What a goal it was, too, in a match everyone still remembers above any of the other 28 he played for Barcelona last season across 872 minutes.

Pedri slid a magical pass through on 31 minutes. Bardghji took it on his left foot, drove into the penalty area and unleashed a rocket. Alvaro Valles had no chance.

The celebration was something else: the Swede mimicked the Chidori move performed by Sasuke, one of the characters in the Japanese animated series Naruto.

His night at La Cartuja didn't stop there. A few minutes earlier he had teed up Ferran Torres for Barcelona's 2-1 lead with a perfectly weighted pass.

First goal and first assist in a Barcelona shirt, then, both in the same match and inside 20 minutes of each other.

Bardghji spoke of his delight after the match, pointing to how attached he is to the club. The Swedish forward said: "People know how much I love this club, and I can't describe how I feel after scoring my first goal for Barcelona."

That display grabbed the headlines and was supposed to earn Roony Bardghji a bigger role in the side. The reality turned out very differently.

More than three months passed before the Swede started again in La Liga, in mid-March. He had been handed starts elsewhere before that: the Champions League tie against Slavia Prague, the Copa del Rey against Guadalajara and the Spanish Super Cup semi-final in Saudi Arabia.

He scored and set up Raphinha twice in that Super Cup tie, helping Barcelona crush Athletic Bilbao 5-0. That was the other big night of his time at the club.

Minutes came more regularly in the closing stretch of the season, but the vitality and the distinctive touch of his early days in a Barcelona shirt had gone.

Barcelona put him on the market in the summer and he came very close to leaving after his agent met sporting director Deco. The club had taken the same approach with a number of young players, generating big financial returns by selling those who had cost them little in the first place. Then the knee injury ended all of it.