Mastour, Adu, Bolasie: 12 football YouTube sensations who were flops in real life

There is no better, more informed, definitive way of deciding how good a player is than by watching their YouTube highlights.

Those are the rules. And they always work. Foolproof.

Of course, that isn’t true. YouTube highlights are a great way to keep us entertained and get us all excited over potential transfers throughout that long, summer window, but you must watch them at your own risk.

Wanting to get recon on a player you’ve never watched before isn’t a bad idea, but those YouTube compilations are a dangerous road to follow, if you rely on them too much.

Compilation makers can make just about any average player look world class with five or ten minutes of clips, some obnoxiously loud music, and perhaps a few graphics. Put those together and it might look like a complete scouting report, but it’s not. Often far from it.

That subculture of YouTube compilations has since been found out in more recent years, with fans slowly becoming wiser to the concept of YouTube highlights packages. But they’re not dead and buried, making for a selection of players that have flopped in real life, despite looking every part a world class player in the five minute sequence.

From familiar faces to names that will hit the spot with nostalgia, GIVEMESPORT has pulled together a list of the biggest highlights merchants around in football.

Signing for Arsenal for some £72 million back in 2019, the transfer fee and the YouTube highlights reels had just about everybody convinced that Arsenal had found a diamond.

Since then, Pepe has flopped tremendously in the Premier League, looks closer to a £15m player and has not been able to find an ounce of a groove under Mikel Arteta. By no means a bad player, but one that needs a move away from the