Tite needed to be convinced by his coaching staff to give Raphinha a chance in the selection. When the player’s name was suggested to the coach, he was not thrilled.
“First he grumbled. Then he asked: ‘but we already have a lot of that position'”, he tells the Sheet Matheus Bacchi, son and one of the coach’s assistants.
All of the Brazilian coaching staff had already observed the striker, at the time at Leeds, in England. In general, before any athlete is introduced to the coach, their name has to pass through this filter.
“I don’t have the time or energy to do everything. So there’s a good amount of time in this prospection of athletes”, explained Tite.
In the case of Raphinha, this task was still hampered by the Covid-19 pandemic. The health crisis made it impossible for the selection professionals to carry out a face-to-face follow-up as usual.
“We rarely call an athlete without having followed him live”, explains Matheus. “So you had this difficulty. [com o Raphinha] and we sought as much information as possible.”
According to him, the attacker’s name was already on the assistants’ radar since the formation of the list for the 2021 Copa América, but he ended up not being called at the time. Matheus’ appointment was what mobilized the rest of the commission, such as César Sampaio, responsible for looking for his behavioral history.
They weren’t the only ones interested in the Porto Alegre-born athlete. Shortly after his first months in English football, some of the biggest European teams, such as Chelsea, Bayern Munich and Barcelona, ​​also started to monitor him.
Brazilian clubs, on the other hand, let the jewel pass. Revealed in AvaÃ, in 2015, a team for which he did not even play as a professional, the boy left the country for Portugal, to play for Vitória de Guimarães, where he turned professional.
In Europe, he had a rapid rise. Still in Portugal, he spent time at Sporting, at the time commanded by Jorge Jesus, then played for a season at Rennes, in France, until reaching the Premier League in 2020.
Under the tutelage of Argentine Marcelo Bielsa, he quickly became a starter and emerged as one of the main players in the Premier League.
Even so, he was still unknown to the Brazilian public when he was called up by Tite for the first time, in September 2021. With no popular outcry around his name, he was chosen to replace Éverton Cebolinha, former darling of the team. .
In a year with the Brazil shirt, however, he removed any suspicion about his football. In his debut, against Venezuela, in Caracas, he was responsible for taking the Brazilian team to the turnaround, with assists for Marquinhos and Antony, in a confrontation for the Qualifiers.
In the third match for the selection, he won the chance to be a starter and took the opportunity to also win the trust of the Brazilian fans. Against Uruguay, he had a gala performance and scored twice in the 4-1 victory, again in the qualifiers.
“This night never had to end,” he said at the time.
It was enough to win the competition of athletes who had been part of Tite’s squad for much longer to be a key part of the canarian team that would be taken to the World Cup in Qatar.
Outside the national team, his career was also about to change. In July of this year, Barcelona beat competition from other teams and took the Brazilian out of England. The club took an emotional advantage in the dispute, as Raphinha wanted to follow in Ronaldinho’s footsteps.
When the deal was closed, the striker received a call from the idol. “Ronaldo sent me a video, called my father and congratulated me. I was happier than I already was,” he said.
He was also calmer after the messages from the former number 10. The youngster was afraid of going to Barcelona on the eve of the World Cup and, during the adaptation period, not having many games as a starter.
“Knowing that there are less than six months to go until the Cup, you have to be active in the clubs, that weighs on the decision, but I trust my potential”, he said before making his debut for Barça.
It only took a few months, however, for him to also win the club’s commission. Xavi, Barcelona’s coach, began to see in the striker characteristics similar to those of Neymar and Rivaldo. “He has the profile of a pure winger, so he ends up looking more like Neymar, but he shoots on goal like Rivaldo.”
The gaucho has, so far, 18 games for the club, two goals and four assists in official games.
Even with the fluctuations of the Catalan team this season, in which for the second time in a row they were eliminated from the Champions League in the group stage, Raphinha managed to stand out in the team, with good performances that stamped his passport to the World Cup.
This is the tenth in a series of ten texts about players who can surprise at the 2022 World Cup. They are published on Tuesdays.
I am currently a news writer for News Bulletin247 where I mostly cover sports news. I have always been interested in writing and it is something I am very passionate about. In my spare time, I enjoy reading and spending time with my family and friends.
