Raphinha and the sun in November, by Joan Josep Pallàs

Brest lasted just 10 minutes driven by a noisy fan not counteracted by its counterpart on the other side (entertainment stands sector) and thanks to the captaincy of a wide, almost two-meter-tall guy named Ludovic Ajorque who intimidated him for a while until he stopped. He saw that it was no big deal, that the giant was a calamity on his feet. Barça played a good game from then on, recognizable from head to toe, that is, recovering the high pulsations that have brought them here and forgetting their defective functions in both Donostia and Vigo.

The Barça team was once again a team full of energy, grouped in pressure and, above all, knew how to finally attack without Lamine Yamal. Since there is no winger like him, Flick expanded the field by making the full-backs Koundé and Gerard Martín deeper and accumulating many people in the center. Barça’s expertise consisted of accelerating the ball when it touched and making it roll at a high speed based on short combinations with Casadó and Pedri (the Canary star) starting the plays, Olmo and Raphinha chewing them and Fermín and Lewandowski finishing them. And without anyone getting in the way. The Pole, who is impressive this season, scored two goals, surpassing 100 in the top European competition and resisting retirement with a commitment worthy of Dorian Gray that few of us saw coming. Just as we didn’t see the new Raphinha coming either.

Flick’s team finally knew how to attack without Lamine Yamal, linking passes at full speed

Raphinha goes on a rampage

It’s already dark in Barcelona and Raphinha arrives with some (in his opinion) nice sunglasses to the stadium locker room, an hour and a half before the start of the game. Last year the image would have caused us rejection, because there is nothing more laughable than a guy with a crack air who does not meet expectations. We have all met those types of ghosts. Raphinha has earned the right to perpetrate this type of birth. He’s not Neymar, but he’s been fooling around for months now, overcoming the feeling that we were dealing with an honest and professional footballer, valid adjectives for a master miller but not for a guy who must get thousands of fans out of their seats. Getting rid of these popular sentences is tremendously difficult because they predetermine the fate of the majority of failed players. This atypical Brazilian has been able to overturn our verdict (raise your hand if you have not thought, said or shouted with the vein in your neck bursting that Raphinha was not a player for Barça) and has turned the rumor that hovers over the heads of the footballers that we consider lost in admiration and choruses of support. This Tuesday night he displayed himself again with unprecedented confidence, again with the bracelet on his arm, stripes that the locker room has given him and that have inflated his ego. Now he controls the ball without the old clumsiness, now he is precise in his passes, whether short or long, now he plays Laudrup and filters a golden ball to Lewandowski, now he brakes and changes the game at a distance of 30 meters. Now he tries the shot and be careful! Now he has time to cover Koundé who has launched himself into the attack leaving his back unattended (clarification: he already did that before but he fell short in everything else, so it was not enough for us ).

This Raphinha can definitely wear sunglasses wherever he wants. Qualsevol nit can sortir the sunsang Jaume Sisa. Raphinha is so inspired that maybe the November nights are sunny and we don’t know how to see them. As it happened to us with him.

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