Uhhh I can give you few things; Ceballos, Llorente, Modric, Kroos, Casemiro and now possibly Thiago. Also, Madrid 'not rating' a player doesn't mean anything. Makelele, Sneidjer and Robben weren't rated by Madrid either. Every club has examples of players they misjudged or just couldn't keep that went on to do well elsewhere. We're currently experiencing ours at Chelsea with Salah, De Bruyne and Lukaku. It's normal in football. You win some, you lose some.
Also, you don't know for sure that the option to buy wasn't agreed, especially since there were conflicting stories (Chelsea media vs Madrid media). For all we know, there could have been just a gentleman's agreement to sell next summer. From our perspective, buying Kepa meant that we wouldn't even have been able to buy Kovacic outright this summer anyway, so it had to be a loan.
I've never seen a loan player post a permanent goodbye on his social media to his parent club when he knew for sure he was coming back. It doesn't happen that way. There's no need to beat yourself up over it. You have the best midfield in the world and won 3 CLs in a row with them and you're about to add another top quality CM to it with youngsters waiting on the wings that have high potential too. Kovacic isn't irreplaceable to Madrid. Let it go.
