It was one afternoon where, out of the blue, it was confirmed that Chelsea had hijacked Arsenal in the Raphinha transfer race. On social media, there was delirium amongst the Blues supporters who believed Todd Boehly had pulled off a masterstroke.
However, it was soon known that Barcelona was his dream destination and his agent Deco got to work and broke the Blues' fans hearts in the process by negotiating a big money transfer in a creative way for a club that was and still is cash-strapped.
Eventually, the 25-year-old got his wish and ended up moving to the Camp Nou, whilst Chelsea settled on Raheem Sterling and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. The £47.5m man signed from Manchester City has been one of the standout performers so far of this campaign, whilst the jury is still out on the former Arsenal icon who has only played two games to date.
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But the key question is whether or not Barca's new No. 22 would have helped Thomas Tuchel and the Blues attack in the early parts of 2022/23 as the indifferent form led to the sacking of the German. football.london looks into what the Brazilian international has done so far as a Blaugrana player.
His first game came in the friendly in the United States whereby the former Leeds star netted in the 6-0 demolition of David Beckham's Inter Miami CF. Directly following that on the same pre-season tour, the left-footed winger arguably scored the best goal of the pre-season campaign with his arrowed shot from distance which in the end, was enough for Barca to come away 1-0 winners from the El Clasico abroad.
Since that last pre-season outing on July 24, the player in question has only attained two more goal contributions to date as his season has been a slow burner so far, just like fellow Chelsea target Jules Kounde, who came under heavy criticism for defending in that 2-0 Champions League defeat at the hands of Bayern Munich a week ago.
Undoubtedly, there is a lot to come from Raphinha and his current boss Xavi knows just this as referenced by his rousing verdict of the winger in his pre-Bayern Munich press conference.
He said: "Yes for me he is an important player, he’s dynamic, he doesn’t just help us in attack, defensively he’s very intense, he understands how to apply the press. He’s a fantastic football player and I have a lot of confidence in him."
Raphinha may have added a different dynamic to the Chelsea attack, especially under Graham Potter but as shown by his start, he would not have single-handedly saved Tuchel from the chop. Maybe, £65m was saved in this incidence.
Of course, the rest of the season will have to be analysed before judging the extent of how badly Chelsea and more specifically Boehly missed out in this situation.
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