To score, first you have to learn how to miss it. To be fair, Raphinha missed a lot. Perhaps the most common one is the low screamer, whose left foot is dragged into the goal, disappearing into the advertising blocks as the goalkeeper walks calmly in search of new balls. If you close your eyes and try to imagine Raphinha missing, it's almost certainly a miss you imagine.

But Rafenha can also be missed in other ways. The wild slices of the back column are another favorite. Free kicks enter the wall. The title of that clutter sailed harmlessly on the bar, and Rafenha was never the greatest title of the ball, but he would continue running over and over again if he had to. If it feels strange to start a discussion of one of Europe’s most prolific strikers by listing all the ways he’s missed, one person will help explain the other. Raphinha is a winger, not a pure forward, but his common ground with all the great shooters in the world is the ability to outweigh grace, making the final miss missing, and continuing to shoot with ruthless, ruthless hunger.

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Raphinha missed 32 goals in the Champions League this season. That's 73% of all his shots. Only Paris Saint-Germain's Ousmane Dembélé missed more. Or, in other words: the second scorer of the game, a quietly assembled one of the greatest Champions League seasons in history, is not in the top 20 on every 90-minute goal.

This is not a strict phenomenon either. In Leeds' last Premier League season, Raphinha ranked ninth with 31st hit percentage and 31st in target. In short, it's a player who often misses a lot, but he's been working on it because he gets the core of football, and it's an odds. Most of the time, you miss it. But keep shooting for corners, from time to time you might just land the treble and a cone.

Last summer, odds piled up quite firmly with Raphinha. A bad 2023-24 season put him off the court and considered new options. With Lamine Yamal's favored position on the right wing, Nico Williams was hunted on the other side, and the club's financial strait asked them to sell for purchase, an open secret that Barcelona could have been open to the offer.

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Modern Barcelona is indeed not a second chance to trade. Saudi Pro League has put forward Al Hilal's proposal, Raphinha can contact his Brazilian international teammates Malcom, Neymar and Renan Lodi. "I saw people asking me to leave," he said. "Then I wasn't good enough with the club. I struggled mentally and it changed life for my family."

Indeed, he was fantasizing about his negative story and the prospect of failure, which was Raphinha’s brief consideration of quitting football at the age of 27. But he had a good cup match where he was appointed to the game and when he came back his phone waited for his new club manager. Hansi Flick told him: "Before making any decisions, come and train."

What does Flick see if others don't have? On the energy and body of the elbow honed by Marcelo Bielsa of Leeds, fearless disc drop skills, shot volume, a fanatical appetite for defensive work: This is already obvious to those who work with him. Flick has envisioned a spectacular attack aircraft on a magnificent attack aircraft based on rhythm and Verve, and he has the ability to defend and shoot at speed, equally comfortable on the wing or cut into the center, Raphinha installed the bill perfectly.

But perhaps Flick’s real insight is not technical, but temperament. He recognized that in a young team, Raphinha had the potential to be a producer leader, a mentor, a player who embodies the values ​​he wanted to instill. Don't be afraid of failure. No bondage. You will get the last missed idea out of your mind and go again, go again, go again, go again.

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Still, Raphinha is a player who needs a settled, supportive environment. He has no unshakable Messianic self-confidence of Kylian Mbappé or Erling Haaland. He hasn't skated at the youth level. Instead, he suffered numerous rejections and did not leave Europe without having played professional games in Brazil. His brutal filterless honesty and uneasy filterless shooting seemed to pop out from a common root: an innate fatalism that accepts that we cannot eventually escape the failure, and what matters is how we respond.

There was a moment in Saturday's Copa del Rey's match against Real Madrid, which seemed to be a microcosm. In the sixth and last minute of the injury time, Rafenha fell sharply in the Madrid region. punish. Elated. VAR reviews. Decided to overturn. Raphinha's glory moment was taken away by him, replacing the mock yellow card with a yellow card with little protest or tempting hint. Just sighed and a series of arms, as if saying: Yes, typical.

Talk about Ballon d'Or, who is a favorite of powerful bookmakers, may be a bit exaggerated. Not playing in a major international championship this summer, which may depend on Barcelona winning the Champions League, in which case emotions may eventually put Pedri, Lamine Yamal or Robert Lewandowski in front of him. The basic figures suggest that Rafenha’s unicorn season in the Champions League may not necessarily be sustainable. His 12 goals came from 5.5 XG.

However, this is an amazing story. Recently, this is a player who may have been lost by European football recently, and perhaps even all football, finally found the belongings to European football. This is the second chance, the lessons of perseverance, glory beyond the balance sheet and the value of the original numbers.

Or, as Raphinha says, “Now, my thoughts are closed to money and open to dreams.”