 Rafinha knows all about the Premier League after scoring 17 goals and setting up a lot more. The Brazilian then completed what he described as a dream move to Barcelona. But this season, it's been a bit more frustrating. The emergence of the team sensation Lameen Yamal on the right flank has done Rafinha a few favours and Barça may be willing to do it. Rafinha is a very disappointing player to watch. He's quick, he has a great work ethic and yet nothing ever seems to come from it, right? Well, not exactly. In 17 matches across all competitions this season, Rafinha has scored three goals, provided six assists at a rate of one goal contribution per every 90 minutes. Taken at face value, those are very impressive stats. But just to get a clearer idea of what's going on here, let's compare him with Europe's most elite wingers. Bukayo Saka, Vinny Jr., Osmanay Dembele, and Doku. Saka, England's golden boy, has a goal contribution rate of one goaler assist every 162 minutes this season. Vinny Jr.'s is one goaler assist every 107 minutes, Dembele's is one every 230 minutes, and Doku, one of the most exciting players in Europe at the moment, has a rate of one goaler assist every 100 minutes. According to these stats, you know, the things that actually matter, goals and assists, Rafinha is one of the best wingers in all of Europe and that even stands when you go even further into these numbers. Among the same players that I've already mentioned when looking at shot-creating actions per 90, maybe one of the most important stats for a winger, Rafinha sits near the top of that as well. Vinny Jr.'s 4.5, shot-creating actions per 90, Doku is at 5.6, Saka's at 5.7, Rafinha is at 6.37, and Dembele is at 6.9. I hope this is as shocking to you as it is to me, because when I watch him, I get frustrated with his play eight times out of ten. So seeing that he is up there with some of the best players in Europe, not just getting lucky goals, but also creating the most chances of all of them, what the hell's going on here? I think he is incredibly predictable, always wanting to cut onto his left foot. But I've also watched every single game that he's played in in the past two seasons, so maybe I seem to know more about him than his defenders do. His predictability may be obvious to me and to Barcelona fans from all over the world, but it wasn't really that well known for the earlier parts of his career. Just look at this quote from Tifa YRL back when Barcelona first signed him. This allows Rafinha to do some of the things that he's better at, which is getting into at least one-to-one situations against fullbacks. And because he's so good on both feet, he can either go down the line or he can cut inside as well. Good with both feet? You must be thinking of the other Rafinha, because that is not at all how I would describe him right now. I don't bring this up to shame Tifa. In fact, I love their channel, but the fact is that Rafinha has always been pretty misunderstood. Over the past few days, I've watched his highlights from Barcelona, Leeds, Wren, and when he played in Brazil, just to confirm this, but he doesn't seem to be an elite dribble. It's hard for him to be a player at all, and while he's been at Barça, it seems like all you need to do is double-team the guy to guarantee that he just passes it back to the right back. So despite the numbers that he is putting up, that's a huge regression from what Barcelona fans saw from Osmane Dembele last season. The Frenchman was, I don't want to say the perfect winger, but basically as good as it could have gotten in Chavi's system. He held the width on the right, gave us an outlet on the counter, and delivered delightful balls into the box for Lewandowski. Rafinha is not doing that at all because he is a different player. He wants to tuck in, play a ball over the top, or exploit the half-spaces and get in on goal that way. He also seems to have pretty threatening positioning, because otherwise, I don't think any of these goals and assists would be popping up the way that they are. But that doesn't really matter for a lot of fans, and they're generally left pretty disappointed when Rafinha is on the pitch. And a lot of that has to do with comparisons, specifically comparisons with Neymar. Neymar was everything that Rafinha is not. An outlet, a threat on the counter, more importantly than anything else though, he was a beautiful player. Neymar helps make Barcelona a fun and exciting team to watch. But Rafinha is not that player. He's not doing that right now, at least. I'm going to be honest, I don't love watching Rafinha play football, but he is still making things happen and putting his name on the score sheet in ways a lot of players don't. Rafinha may not be that great to watch, but he is putting up numbers that all of these other amazingly incredible wingers aren't, and he deserves a lot of credit for that, because that's not something that anyone expected from him this season. But he can create chances and he can score goals, even if it isn't the most flashy thing. However, there are even more important things that he brings to a match that go completely underappreciated by so many people, because he specifically has a few abilities that I think may make this team incredible in the next few years. Not only does he press and run like very few players in the world do, but he is actually a good defender, and that's something very important for really good teams. When playing in knockout tournaments like the Champions League, more often than not, you are going to find yourself either chasing the game in the final moments or defending for your life to protect the lead. Rafinha would be invaluable in those moments, but only when he is paired up with similarly qualified attackers, like Viter Rokk and maybe surprisingly Ferran Torres. The intensity that a Torres Rokk-Rafinha combination would do in that front three would be incredible and it would be an amazing step forward from where the squad is right now. Sure, Robert Lewandowski can be good like he was for the first half of last season, but Victor Rokk is a huge threat on the counter. He is fast and strong and can make powerful runs that somebody like Rafinha can take advantage of because he's probably more likely to make a line breaking pass than try to dribble around people to exploit that same space. All of that combined with the intensity of Ferran Torres can take a front three of two misfits and a teenager to being one of the most exciting front threes in the world. Sure, that is stupidly optimistic and to think that next season combined they're all gonna go and score 60 goals together. You know, that's a little crazy, but the importance of this still stands whether or not they score a ton of goals because they bring something that Chavi's team has been desperately needing recently. As I've said in my other videos, Chavi's team is a bit of a mess out of possession. They just don't seem to have a cohesive style or press well and that hurts a lot even against poorer teams. They couldn't easily press and win the ball back against Shakhtar, Antwerp and Almeria. That is unacceptable for teams at that level. You just don't have any reason to allow them that much time on the ball. I think Chavi wants them to press but something has been lost in translation since last season and the team is just not able to do it well and we can notice that even more now because of the loss of Gavi. Roque, Rafinha and Ferran Torres together can all be the answer to this. The only problem is actually getting them on the pitch together. I don't generally have much optimism in that because at times Chavi seems to be a little bit too much of a people pleaser. Playing Lewandowski and Felix so much because maybe La Porta wants him to or Robert wouldn't be able to handle being on the bench and so I'm a little bit pessimistic about actually getting these guys into the squad but to be fair, he seems to have been a little bit stricter recently about all of these things. We've seen him criticizing Robert Lewandowski on the sidelines and heard rumors of him really going into them for not pressing well and also the rumors that Joel Felix is going to be dropped for Ferran Torres against Las Palmas. That is yet to be seen but I hope this is a good sign of things changing for the future. Chavi taking a more active stance in making this team flow and operate in the way he wants it to a little bit better. For Chavi's system to work, Rafinha may not be the ideal winger but he can be very beneficial on possibly the more important side of the ball, getting the ball back. And so I think Rafinha can be a very key element to this especially if Joel Cancelo stays on the left side because Cancelo does not want to overlap. They both want to invert and so it's a little bit messy there but with Cancelo on the left and maybe moving the ball day to the right or with Coonday on the right, it can be a very, very lethal combination there. Learning that this year, Rafinha is better than Bukayo Saka, Doku and pretty much just as good as Usmane Dembele was mind blowing to me. Rafinha is really good right now. He's making a very substantial impact and he's giving the team goals something that no one else is really doing right now. The crazy thing that no one is noticing about Rafinha right now is that he is actually good, very good. He's just misunderstood. Also on this Sunday, January 7th, I'm gonna be doing a live stream watch along of Barca's Copa del Rey match. I'm gonna be doing that whatever time that game is going on in your neck of the woods, log in and check out the channel, turn on notifications because that should let you know when I go live. It'll probably be about 15 to 30 minutes before the match. Thank you all for watching and if you did enjoy this video, why don't you jump on over to this video? That's all about the up and coming right winger for Barcelona, Lameen Yamal. But thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Peace.