Consecrated as one of the top figures of Hansi Flick's FC Barcelona, Raphinha is living his best moment as a Barça player. Before the derby against Espanyol, the Brazilian gave an interview to 'El País' in which, in addition to assessing his great present, he recalled his difficult beginnings, as well as leaving his feelings before the duel against the periquitos and confessing about the racist episodes of which he was a victim in the Clásico at the Bernabéu.
"In derbies, after everything I've experienced, I can assure you that it doesn't matter if one team is fighting for relegation and the other for the league. In England, for example, Leeds against United is like a historic derby. And we gave them a lot of work. They had to run a lot more than they expected," he began by saying about the emotion that is experienced in clashes between city rivals.
"Those on the street, they are really spicy. When you are a child and you live in a favela you get used to seeing people with guns. And there are fans who go to games with guns. They try to scare you so that their team wins. Once, as children, we were in the locker room and they started banging on our door. 'If you win, you won't get out of here,' they shouted at us," he added about those derbies he had to play in Brazil.
His beginnings in Brazil
An anecdote that led him to remember his difficult beginnings in South America, where he even got to beg for food on the street. "I was about 12 years old. I was with a friend, all dirty after finishing a training session. There were no showers at the club. And the bus took a long time to arrive. We were hungry, but we didn't have money. So, we started begging on the street to eat something," he commented.
"It was a bit complicated, people don't want you to bother them. Good-hearted people helped us. But I understand the people who didn't give us anything. It's difficult to be stopped, we seemed like kids living on the street. It's normal that they were a bit scared," he said, adding that "it's important not to forget everything we went through. Remembering makes you a better person."
His present at FC Barcelona
A situation that contrasts with his great present at Barça, although the player himself has admitted that he has had difficult times at the club due to the pressure generated by the badge. "When you play for a club as big as Barcelona, criticism is normal. Here the demands are at the highest level. I needed some time to adapt," he said.
A problem that he has managed to reverse, and it has a lot to do with the confidence he has managed to gain under Hansi Flick. "Confidence is not only important in football, it is also important in life. If you don't have the confidence to do your best at work, it is difficult for things to work out. And when you don't have it, you often forget what you know how to do," he said.
Raphinha, despite being one of the team's great figures, does not consider himself a protagonist. "I don't feel like a protagonist. I know I'm having a good season, but the protagonist is the whole team. If we score 10 goals, but we concede 10, the game ends in a draw. When everyone is doing well, it is natural for the forwards to stand out more, they are the ones who score goals. In my opinion, everyone is a protagonist," he said.
He also confessed that he saw himself out of the club on a couple of occasions, but Deco asked him for patience and he ended up reaping the rewards. "At times, yes (he saw himself out). Above all, during the first six months, before the World Cup. But I also felt it in the rest of the windows. They always said one thing or another, that I was no good, that I had to be sold," he said.
When asked if he thinks Lamine Yamal is following in the footsteps of Lionel Messi in Barcelona, the man from Porto Alegre confessed that he sees him as more similar to Neymar Jr. than to the Argentine.
"I see him more like Neymar. His dribbles, how quickly he thinks to dribble. When you think you can steal the ball from him, he does something you've never seen in your life"
The racist episodes at the Santiago Bernabéu
On the other hand, when asked why he didn't stop the Clásico after the racist insults from a section of the crowd, Raphinha said that "we've already talked about it, each person is different. Of course it bothers you, we're doing our job. We know that the other team's fans can try to do everything to make things not go well for you and that we must be focused, but when they insult you and those insults are taken somewhere else, it's more complicated."
"What we can do after the games, we do after. During, we have to be focused. There are many people who normalize going to stadiums to insult. That cannot be normalized. Someone with more power must do something"
Finally, he said he understood Vinicius Jr.'s actions regarding this issue. "We don't know what happened in his childhood. We don't know the things he heard when he was little. These things take people to their limits and it bothers him a lot. Vinicius is a very smiling boy, he is always making jokes. The only issue that bothers him a lot is this one, I understand his anger," he concluded.