He can, because we invest a lot more in a player than just money. Maybe we sign him for 10m. and some other rival signs a player we've been following along with Mina, and that player turns out to be great.
Of course there is always a risk if you're looking from that standpoint but other great clubs will always buy talented players we were following and decided not to sign. We can't buy everyone. Sometimes those players will turn out great and people will go crazy why we didn't sign this or that player but even more often those players won't met high expectations in bigger clubs.
We still have to take a risk with Mina because there are not many (if any) other option available at that price. We could instead pay 50M for De Ligt who is younger and has higher ceilling than Mina but there is also no guarantee that he would be a success for us. Every transfer is a gamble because you never know how player will do in his new club even if he's a great talent and/or has played good in his previous club(s). If you are buying younger players (age 18-22) that risk is usually even higher because you still have to develop them and that's not always possible because you can't guarantee them enough playing time. Players aged 24 (like Mina will be next year) and older are usually already closer to their full potential and don't need that much regular playing time to develop. Of course I expect Mina will improve here just because he'll train and play with better players and work under better coaches he had so far (at least I assume that because I don't know how good his current coaches are). But his longterm potential won't be impacted as much as it could happen with younger players if he won't play regularly.
The club's opinion about Mina, and the popular opinion in South American medias is that he's this great talent that is ready to make it at Barcelona.
True and that's why we'll buy him. Most people base their expectations on players transfer price and 10M is nothing in todays market. I will be happy if Mina will become at least a solid rotational player, if he can be a starter and possible Pique's replacement one day even better. I'll only call him a flop if he'll turn out to be next Douglas which I don't expect. Everyone laughed at us when we bought Douglas and as you said Mina is highly rated among almost all football people in South America and what's probably even more important, other European clubs with good scouts like Dortmund also want to pay twice as much for him than we'll pay. It's still possible that he'll fail but for his price it's worth the risk even if we won't buy another "can't miss talent" (that would cost us much more) because of him.
Anyway, we'll most likely buy another CB in summer so we can still go after De Ligt or whoever is the next on our CB target list (that depends on many factors) so we can't really say we'll miss out on someone because of Mina.
