 Barca started well against Real Madrid, but lost control of midfield and ultimately the match. Without Rakutic, they were completely outrun in the middle of the park. When he is at his best, he is their engine. Messi, Neymar, Suarez. These are names that come to mind when we think of Luis Lundriquez, Barcelona, but it was Rakutic's decision to sacrifice everything he was good at and do this that made that team so successful. This is the story of one of the most underrated players of all time, but to understand why, we have to go back to his beginning. And thank you to Sikik for sponsoring that portion of the video. Sikik helps take the confusion out of buying tickets for games and events. So use our code robbielu at checkout if you want to save 20 bucks and also support the channel as well. Born in Switzerland to Croatian parents, Rakutic only ever wanted to do one thing, play football. And with a father and an older brother who had been quite talented footballers as well, it wouldn't be long before major European teams, including the likes of Arsenal, came knocking on his door. However, the family decided to remain in Switzerland and keep Rakutic at his local boyhood club, allowing him to develop in a much more familiar area, as well as probably allowing him to get a lot more attention from the training staff at the smaller clubs. At 17, Rakutic signed his first professional contract with his local club FC Basel, and this sparky-haired, exciting teenager made his mark on the team immediately. In his first full season with Basel, he scored the Swiss League's goal of the season, a screaming volley from outside the box, which is something that we've become all too familiar with from him today. But he had something about him at the time that a lot of players in his position just did not have, a calm and cool head. Again, he would always make the smartest decision he could. It was with this in mind that instead of making the jump to Barcelona or Inter Milan when they showed interest in him at 19 years old, he moved to Schauke in the Bundesliga instead, where he could play top flight football for a competitive side while still developing and learning as a player and as a person. Today, this is something that a lot of players do not take advantage of. Players like Pedri and Jude Bellingham made the opposite decisions and took advantages of their excitement around their names and made the jump to huge teams at very young ages. Lucky for them, it's kind of worked out so far, but there have been many, many others that have not been so lucky. However, Rakutic would take his time making his steps up the footballing pyramid. In the Bundesliga finally playing top flight football, Rakutic made his presence known immediately. He quickly became a cornerstone of that Schauke team, appearing in 37 matches in all competitions in his first year, while having 12 goal contributions as well as leading the team to a third place finish in the Bundesliga and a very solid run in the Champions League. The enterprising young attacking midfielder had slotted himself into a very competitive team at 19 perfectly. However, the second, it seemed like everything was in the perfect position for him to succeed at Schauke, everything stopped. The next season would see Schauke struggle and struggle greatly, eventually dropping to eighth in the table, going out in the third qualifying round in the Champions League and having three different coaches fired in the process. As you can imagine, the youngest players in the squad, including Rakutic, were blamed for a lot of their problems. Rakutic lost his starting spot in the squad and though he was still contributing in the few minutes he had, it just wasn't the same anymore. That one safe decision to go to Schauke instead of Inter Milan or Barcelona didn't seem so smart anymore. But then when all seemed lost, a manager would come in that would help create the player that would one day become the engine of FC Barcelona, Felix Magath. A talented, creative and intelligent playmaker with an eye for goal, Magath was an elegant player on the ball who possessed excellent technical skills, vision and stamina, despite his lack of significant pace and his stocky physique. He was also a strong passer and striker of the ball with his left foot and stood out for his work rate on the pitch, as well as his ability to interpret the game. Well, if that doesn't sound like someone who is going to click very, very well with Ivan Rakutic, then I don't know who will. However, with Magath, it took a little while for Rakutic to get the ball rolling. He only played 90 minutes once in the entire first half of Magath's initial season. But by the New Year, they had come up with a solution to it, and that was Rakutic's new position. Magath implemented a new 4-2-2 formation, and with Rakutic shining as his new box-to-box midfielder, the team's performances improved greatly, only losing four matches through 17 in the latter half of the season. The energy Rakutic had always shown combined neatly with his calm expertise on the ball, helping lead Shalka to a second place finish in the Bundesliga, falling only five points back from, guess what, Bayern. That year, Rakutic learned the value of having a compact, intelligent, and fluid midfield. And as much as Rakutic has always made the safe and intelligent decision, there is one decision that stands out from all of the rest, and that is when he decided to represent Croatia over Switzerland. Growing up, he had always played for Switzerland's academy teams. After all, that's where he was born and lived most of his life. But when he was 19 and he received a call from the Croatian national team coach asking for his help, he couldn't say no, and he led with his heart for the first time instead of his head. Had he been leading with his mind, he probably would have remained playing for Switzerland, because this decision led to his family receiving death threats, his home being robbed, and his being completely and utterly hated by Switzerland fans forever. They may never forgive him, but Rakutic made the right decision for him, and the rest of it, the Modric and Rakutic combination in Croatia, is history. At Sevilla, Rakutic was able to hone each of the skills he had garnered throughout the careers. Sometimes he played as a holding midfielder, other times, more often he played as a much more attacking number 10, even getting to the point where he netted 12 goals in his final season with Sevilla in La Liga, while also winning the Europa League that same year. And to exemplify the impact that Rakutic had on that team, all you have to know is that he was the first foreigner since Diego Maradona to become the club's captain. And with all that success came the eyes of the biggest clubs in the world for the second time in his short career. But this time he finally made the jump, moving to Barcelona in the summer of 2014. There he would be Luis Enrique's first signing, touted as Cesc Fabregas' replacement, but also the man who would replace the aging Chavi. Rakutic now experienced exactly what he wanted to avoid as a youngster, the pressure of the entire world on his shoulders. But even worse, he also had the pressure on him to be someone that he wasn't. He wasn't as flashy as Cesc Fabregas, however, that wasn't so bad, because Cesc Fabregas did not work at Barcelona for a reason. But he also was not nearly as press resistant as Chavi, so he was in a very weird middle ground. And because of that, Barcelona fans were just not that happy with him. He often got slammed by Cules for not having a big enough impact on the pitch or not being exactly what they had had before. But it was precisely that he was not Cesc Fabregas and not Chavi that made him so special. He may not have been a starter for every match that season, but he quickly put Chavi out of a job. Every time Rakutic stepped on that pitch, it seemed like he had one or two more lungs than everyone else, finding the energy to make more rotting moves down the line at the latest moments of the match to score the game winning goal. And he constantly created covers so the incredible attack-minded duo of Messi and Denis Alves could do their thing on the right. Rakutic was the engine that helped that whole team move, and in those first few years at Barça, he may have been the most important player to the way that that team operated, even if the incredible scoring tallies of MSN made all the headlines. However, he had to sacrifice a very important part of himself to get there. While at Sevilla, Rakutic was their most important player, and he went from being the king there to just being a servant at Barcelona. In an interview, Rakutic said that he ran for Messi because he deserved it. He recognized that there were players that just could do more than he could, and so he gave them the ability and the space to do that. Rakutic was the link that made that team operate so smoothly, often driving the ball from deep and bringing it to a position where Messi and Neymar could make a fool of the wing backs or Iniesta could play an incisive pass into the box for Suarez. Without Rakutic, the engine of that team could not run, and yet, pundits and fans saw the results of the group and often forgot about the thoughtful player that was pulling the strings from behind the scenes. Sure, sentiment around him would change every time he made a game-saving tackle or scored a game-winning goal. For the most part, his role went unheralded. That was until the team's form began to falter in 2019-2020. Once a player forgotten by fans when he did good, Rakutic was public enemy number one when they were doing poorly. As his age had slowed him down slightly, and so when the team needed a scapegoat, the player that would go unnoticeable for so long was now the man to blame. Fans claimed that the team was saved by other midfielders covering space and working hard in place of Rakutic, and so the ever problematic Bartomeo regime sent him on his way, abandoning a player that had been so incredibly important to a squad that had been so successful for so many years, yet the man never got the right recognition for it. However, leaving Barcelona may have been the best thing to ever happen to Rakutic. It gave him the opportunity to minimize the scarring of his reputation that would have occurred if he would have just stayed there and been more and more ridiculed by the fans for his age. But more importantly, it gave Rakutic the chance to revitalize the skills that had made him so impressive as a young player, his attacking prowess. Without the incredible stars in front of him at Sevilla, like he had at Barcelona, Rakutic was the main creator again. They relied on him to create chances in the final third, and instead he had his teammates' cover ground for him and defend for him, just as he had done for Messi, and he looked like a whole new player because of it. The release of that burden freed his aging legs to pick and choose the moments to press, and Rakutic was back to lighting up the goal and creating chances for his teammates left, right, and center. This Sevilla team is much, much better because of this expertise of Rakutic, and expertise that he had abandoned for the betterment of the team in his time at Barcelona, and we're seeing brilliant signs of a player that has been forgotten for so long. There are very few players in the world that could have made such a major change through their play style and still made such an incredible impact in the squad, but Rakutic is one of them. But if you enjoyed this, check out this video about the untold story of Gavi, and don't forget if you buy some tickets on C-keek use my code RobbieLew for $20 off at checkout. But thanks for watching, I'll see you next week, bye.