Raphinha has extended his Barcelona contract to 2030, a deal that will take him to the age of 33. He would like to retire at the club, and the club would like him to retire there too. “This is the best decision the club has made,” said Hansi Flick, the head coach Raphinha credits with changing his life.
It is a remarkable turn for a player who, two years ago, had accepted that his time in Catalonia was finished. “In my head, I knew I was leaving,” he says. “That was mentally done, that’s the truth.” He was in Brazil when Flick called and asked him to talk before making a final decision. In that meeting the coach told him he trusted him, that he was going to be important, and that the team’s football would suit him. “In a moment like that, a few small words can change you,” Raphinha says. “I felt a lot of faith in me.”
By 2024 he had reasons to feel unwanted. His numbers were strong — 10 goals and 12 assists in his first season, 10 goals and 13 assists in his second — but Lamine Yamal was emerging, and Raphinha did not feel backed, completing 90 minutes only seven times in 60 games under Xavi Hernández. He knew Barcelona had thought about selling him, and it was no secret that the club wanted to buy Nico Williams. Barcelona failed twice in that pursuit, and a Photoshopped image of Williams in Raphinha’s No 11 shirt on social media hurt. Then Flick arrived.
The role that has changed everything was not planned. Last summer Robert Lewandowski, Ferran Torres and Marcus Rashford all departed, having contributed 38 league goals between them the previous season. Julián Álvarez was supposed to replace them, but Atlético Madrid refused to sell, leaving Barcelona without a striker. “There was a moment of need,” Raphinha says. “There was no No 9 for the friendly against Basel, so I played there.” He did not score, but Barcelona got five. Flick suspected the arrangement might become permanent and was warming to the idea, having also considered other solutions, among them Anthony Gordon. Raphinha had never played as a centre-forward before: “Even as a kid I wasn’t a 9.” Before the opening-day game against Elche, Flick asked whether he was comfortable there or wanted to return to his old position. He said it was fine, and that they could always change back.
Seven league games into the season he has scored 12 goals, plus two more in the Champions League — five clear of the leading scorers in Europe’s other top leagues. No one in Barcelona’s history has started a season like this. He scored twice against Elche, once against Athletic, twice against Rayo and once at Valencia, then a hat-trick against Racing and another against Sevilla, scored with right foot, left foot and header. Two more followed against Feyenoord. Only one La Liga player has a better shot conversion rate. Only once this season has he failed to score, and in that game against Levante he created the first two goals before handing over the penalty for Lamine Yamal to add the third. Barcelona have won all eight of their opening fixtures, scoring five, two, five, five, five, four, seven and three.
His teammates had already seen something more in him. The dressing room voted Raphinha a club captain, third in line, and he was genuinely touched — Flick has since made him his first choice. “When I saw people had voted for me, it was like a switch had been flipped, a shift in mindset,” he says. “People could see something in me I didn’t realise was there, and that’s changed me. I never thought I’d like being Barcelona captain so much. You feel you matter. It’s an honour. It’s not just wearing the armband.” Flick’s view is blunt: “As captain, he goes and everyone follows. We always start with the No 9 and he has that incredible hunger and intensity, the mentality and attitude we need.”
His leadership is built on example as much as words. Raphinha has covered the second-furthest distance in La Liga, and Gradient Sports has measured only three players with more final-third pressures per 30 minutes out of possession. “I talk less than most captains but I know people are watching,” he says. “If you talk too much and then don’t do what you have to, people aren’t going to listen.” It is also about empathy: he says he can tell when Yamal is drifting out of a game and how to reconnect him, recently he was filmed quietly telling Gordon not to be afraid, and there was the moment he sat with Flick on the bench, head down and lost in his thoughts, and drew him out of it. “The coach-player relationship is the most important in football,” Raphinha says. “I told him it was OK, we’d won and we would play well again. I prefer a thousand times to win playing badly than lose playing well.” He adapts the approach to the moment, though he admits he has rarely needed to be “the pesado” because the last two years have been spectacular, even with four of the first team born in 2007.
The success has come with trophies. He led Barcelona to the league with 34 goals and 26 assists in 57 games, and another title followed in 2025-26, when injuries reduced his contribution to 21 goals and eight assists in 33 appearances. He has also won the Spanish Super Cup against Real Madrid. He believes Yamal should win the Ballon d’Or, citing his “individual numbers, collective titles, and the magic on the pitch, charisma”: “For me, he has to take the prize, no matter what. One of one. Of three trophies, he won two with Barcelona. He won the World Cup with Spain.”
Only the Champions League has escaped them, and it is now the obsession. “The semi-final against Inter hurt the most,” Raphinha says, recalling 2025. Against Atlético Madrid in the 2026 quarter-final, he feels they could have gone through, and that decisions might have gone differently. “We’re a young team — that’s not an excuse — and sometimes you lack the maturity to manage key moments,” he says. “This season we’re more mature, better prepared. If we carry on like this, with this mentality, we can compete for it all. We have everything.”