When Philippe Coutinho was lured away from Liverpool, an English football magazine ran a piece explaining that Barcelona was the more glamorous option.
A Brazilian TV programme could hardly believe it. It was obvious and self-explanatory, said the presenter. Did the English audience really need this to be spelled out to them?
To a fan in England, though, it is not necessarily quite so clear. How can the size of clubs be measured? In titles?
At the time – before the 2019 win over Tottenham, Liverpool were tied with Barcelona at five Champions League triumphs. Advantage no one.
And Liverpool, connected to the highs of the swinging cities and the solidarity of harder times afterwards, have a mightily impressive fan culture.
But what they could not offer to someone like Coutinho – and what Leeds or other Premier League clubs could not offer to Raphinha is fulfilment of the dreams of children.
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Barcelona’s glamour in the eyes of a Brazilian has little to do with the club’s history of resistance to the dictatorship of General Franco or its importance as a symbol of Catalan pride.
The appeal comes from more recent chapters in the club’s past – especially in the way that Barcelona were almost a flagship team for the global triumph of European club football.
At the end of 2011, Barcelona thrashed Santos 4-0, without breaking sweat, in the final of the Club World Cup – a competition taken incredibly seriously in Brazil.
After the match Pep Guardiola commented that his team treated the ball the way that his grandfathers told him that Brazil once did.
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And, from the mid 90s, when the European club game turned into a worldwide spectacle, there have often been Brazilians helping them do it.
First there was Romario, the little striker who enjoyed a wonderful season in 1993-4.
Three years later came the original Ronaldo, probably the most powerful striker running with the ball that the game has ever produced – and his exploits gained more international repercussions than those of Romario simply because the matches were now being watched all around the world.
Around the turn of the century came the brilliant unorthodoxy of Rivaldo, and then came three unforgettable seasons of joy dancing to the beat of Ronaldinho.
Is it any wonder that a young Brazilian – especially one with a name starting in ‘R’ – was seduced by these memories, and jumped at the chance of joining the sequence – a sequence which also included Neymar, who, as a member of that Santos side in 2011, felt the full power of Barcelona’s pull at close range.
Philippe Coutinho’s time in Catalona was destined to be an expensive failure. In both tactical and temperamental terms, he was not right for the club.
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This looked clear enough even before he signed. But how could he say no to Barcelona?
Raphinha’s situation is different. The club is in a state of flux, and if he hits the ground running, he could be an important part of a team that takes Barcelona back on the path of greatness – and that really would be a fulfilment of some of his childhood dreams.
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