Raphinha shows Barça value of second chance

The Brazilian has gone from missing man to Ballon d'Or contender thanks to his relentless hunger for goals

- Jonathan Liew

To score, first you have to learn how to miss. Raphinha, to be fair, misses a lot. Most common of all, perhaps, is the low screamer, dragged across goal with the left foot, disappearing into the advertising hoardings with an unseen thud as the goalkeeper calmly strolls off in search of a fresh ball. If you close your eyes and try to picture Raphinha missing, this is almost certainly the miss you are imagining.

But Raphinha can miss in a plethora of other ways, too. The wild slice at the back post is another favourite. The free-kick into the wall. The mistimed header sailing harmlessly over the bar and Raphinha has never been the greatest header of a ball, but he is going to keep making the run nonetheless, again and again, all night if he has to. If it feels weird to begin a discussion of one of Europe's most prolific forwards by listing all the ways he can miss then one helps to explain the other.

Raphinha is a winger rather than a pure striker, but the trait he has in common with all the world's great goalscorers is the ability to prize volume over grace, to put the last miss out of his mind, to keep coming and keep shooting with a ruthless, relentless hunger.

Raphinha has missed the target 32 times in this season's Champions League. That's 73% of all his shots. Only Ousmane Dembélé at Paris Saint-Germain has missed more. Or, to put it another way: the competition's second-top goalscorer, a man quietly putting together one of the greatest Champions League seasons in history, does not rank in the top 20 for shots on target per 90 minutes.