Raphinha Draws Rare Champions League Blank But Barca Progress

Raphinha
Raphinha (Credit Govern de Catalunya / Wikipedia)

The 2024/25 Champions League campaign has been an unusual one, with the new league format seeing a number of top sides struggle early on. Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, Milan and PSG all finished between ninth and 16th, missing out on an automatic berth in the last 16.

Man City and Juventus fared even worse, only making the play-off phase as unseeded teams, where they would both lose. Nonetheless, as we approached the business end of the competition, we still had a very high-class last eight. Liverpool were somewhat surprisingly knocked out in the round of 16 but even so, a quarter final line-up featuring PSG, Real Madrid, Arsenal, Barca, Bayern, Inter and Dortmund (and Aston Villa) represented a classy last eight. It also gave us four of the most successful sides in the competition’s history, two teams (Villa and Dortmund) with one previous win to their name, and two giants (PSG and Arsenal) yet to land a European Cup or Champions league title: a nice mix.

There is a lot of football still to be played, but Barca are currently the favourites to claim a sixth success in this competition. That would draw them level with Liverpool and Bayern in the all-time standings but they had to survive a bit of a scare to make sure of their spot in the last four.

Borussia Dortmund 3-1 Barcelona: Catalans Survive Scare


Barca are four points clear of Real Madrid at the top of La Liga and are thriving under Hansi Flick. Their young team and squad had a rather large wobble over late autumn and early winter but they got back on track at the right time and have a great chance of landing the treble.

They probably felt they had done enough in the first leg of their CL tie with Dortmund, having secured a handsome 4-0 win at the Camp Nou. In the end, they had, but their second leg in Germany was not as straightforward as Flick and Barca fans would have hoped for.

They went one down after 11 minutes and then Serhou Guirassy put the cat among the pigeons at the start of the second period, grabbing his second goal of the game after 49 minutes. He would complete a hat-trick in the 76th minute but it wasn’t enough. In between his second and third strikes, the home team had conceded via an own goal, so Barca had a degree of security. In the end it finished 3-1 on the night to Borussia Dortmund but 5-3 on aggregate to the Catalan giants.

Dortmund had managed to do what they failed to in the first leg and kept Barca’s creative magician Raphinha quiet. He was the architect of that 4-0 win in Spain, scoring the opener and then adding two assists. It would be unfair to his overall form to say the Brazilian has been a Champions League specialist this term but his performances in this elite competition have certauinly been special.

In the second leg Dortmund marshalled him superbly and despite the visitors having the majority of the ball, their star man was limited to just two shots. One was blocked, one on target, with his xG very low at just 0.07 and his expected assists sub-par too at 0.24. He had just 50 touches overall, and only five of those were in the Dortmund box. It is just a shame for the German side they couldn’t handle him so well in that first leg!

Raphinha’s 2024/25 Champions League Stats


To illustrate how well Niko Kovac’s men handled Raphinha it is worth looking at how the former Leeds United player has performed in this season’s Champions League. His output in the 2024/25 tournament thus far has drawn comparison with another South American, former Barca star and perhaps the greatest of all time, Lionel Messi.

Despite drawing a blank last time out against Dortmund, Raphinha still boasts 12 goals from 12 UCL matches this term. His seven assists take his total goal involvements to a massive 19, which gives him over 1.5 goal involvements per game in this year’s tournament. Even allowing for the fact that Barcelona have scored freely in the Champions League this term, that still means that the Brazilian forward has had a hand in over 50% of their goals.

He has started all 12 of his club’s matches in the CL thus far. He has been withdrawn in the second half of three matches but has still played the vast majority of available minutes. He has needed just 85 minutes on the pitch to score each goal, on average, and just 53 minutes for every goal he has been involved with.

In the group phase Barcelona began slowly, losing 2-1 away at Monaco. Their star didn’t score or assist in that one but a few weeks later he both scored and assisted against Young Boys in a comprehensive 5-0 win. Three weeks later came one of Raphinha’s career highlights as he bagged a Champions League hat-trick against German powerhouses Bayern. That helped his side to an easy 4-1 home win.

He continued to perform excellently through the league phase, ending the eight games with eight goals and four assists. That saw the Catalan outfit finish second behind Liverpool with 19 points from a possible 24. Their 28 goals made them easily the leading scorers at that stage of the competition and of course much of that was down to the man who typically plays on the left of the front three.

In the knockout phase Raphinha has perhaps been even better. He got the only goal of the game as his team won 1-0 in Benfica, before adding two and an assist in the return leg in Spain. A goal and two assists were vital as Barca beat Dortmund 4-0 as discussed, more or less ending the tie at half time.

Most Goals in a Champions League Season

Raphina
Raphinha (Credit SportsMax TV / Wikipedia)

There is no doubting Raphinha’s contribution to propelling Flick’s men to the semis but with at most three games remaining for the Brazilian, where does he stand in the bigger picture of the best CL campaigns by an individual? Well, the current record is the 17 goals that a certain Cristiano Ronaldo bagged for Real Madrid in the 2013/14 campaign.

Matching that will probably prove beyond Raphinha, with goals harder to come by in the latter stages of the competition. However, he may be able to move past the previous record-holders, Messi and Jose Altafini. Both got 14 goals, Milan’s Altafini in 1962/63 and Messi in 2011/12.

That said, Ronaldo himself got 16 in 2015/16 and 15 in 2017/18, whilst Raphinha’s current teammate Robert Lewandowski also got 15, for Bayern, in 2019/20. Karim Benzema is another to have netted 15, doing so for Real in 2021/22.

Goal Involvements Record There for the Taking

A more achievable record for Raphinha to target is that for the most combined goals and assists in a single UCL campaign. Ronaldo added four assists to his 17 goals in 2013/14, and Barca’s brilliant Brazilian needs just two more to match CR7’s haul of 21 goal involvements. Watch this space!