With eight games to go in the La Liga season, Barcelona will take a four-point lead into the home straight, as they look to dethrone their perennial rivals Real Madrid as Spanish champions.
Fresh from their latest Champions League win, Real began the campaign as favourites to retain their domestic title, not least because they were finally able to add Kylian Mbappe to their ranks, when the French star joined on a free transfer from Paris Saint-Germain.
And while Mbappe has found his groove following a slow start in Spain, he does not look like being the key player in this season’s title race.
How Raphinha came back from the Barcelona brink
Instead, it is Barcelona’s Raphinha who is driving his team to success, with the Brazilian consistently turning in superlative displays in both La Liga and the Champions League.
The former Leeds United star - ranked at no.2 in FourFourTwo's list of the world's best left-wingers - has netted 27 goals and laid on 20 more, eclipsing his stellar supporting cast and gatecrashing the Ballon d’Or conversation in the process. This 2024/25 campaign has seen a significant leap from the previous season when he netted just ten times and appeared to struggle under previous boss Xavi.
According to Spanish football expert Graham Hunter, his testing 2023/24 campaign saw Raphinha ask serious questions about his future before he sought help via a sports psychologist.
“I've interviewed Raphinha quite extensively recently and he admits that he was really in bad nick last season during the Xavi reign – and he doesn't blame Xavi specifically at all,” Hunter tells FourFourTwo.
“During some of that time, he was going home, telling his wife that he didn't know if he had a future in football, never mind at Barcelona.
“He was often in tears by the time he got home.
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“Therefore, when I talked to him about being named captain, he said he used a sports psychologist, which has utterly changed not only how he looks at his profession, but how he lives today, what he thinks about himself, and that changes him as a sportsman very significantly.
“The result being that when Hansi Flick arrived and told him, ‘I’m going to rely on you,’ it was just such an enormous boost.
“And then, when the players wanted him to be a central part – I think a four-man captaincy team, so it's intermittent that he's captain depending on which player is available – the fact that's on him is gigantic.”
Hunter adds that Raphinha was also able to utilise criticism in the Catalan press to redouble his effort and outut for Barca this season.
“He was absolutely infuriated with the Catalan media and how they speculated that he would automatically be sold to facilitate the purchase of Nico Williams, and that enraged him,” Hunter adds.
“You know, with footballers, incidents like that can either put you off and make you leave in a huff, or can make you take it in and fight harder, and it was the latter for Raphinha.”
