Raphinha Season - The Square Ball 20/10/21

RENNES, WE GET IT

Written by David Guile

We are spoiling Raphinha. We are watching a Leeds United player evolving into the next global superstar, and we are wasting the experience, because it’s impossible to be a Leeds fan without keeping one nervous eye on the future, that little voice at the back of your mind helpfully reminding you that Raphinha might not be part of it.

I’m as guilty as the rest of you. I’m spoiling Raphinha too. He’s been here a year and I’ve just realised I haven’t written a single article about him. I had a think about why that might be, and decided to put it down to my general hipsterdom — who wants to write about a Brazil international when you could dedicate 1,200 words to Adam Forshaw’s injury struggles, right?

But as I sat there in my skinny jeans drinking my soy latte and googling artisan beard oil, the real reason came to me. I don’t want to get attached to Raphinha. I know Wikipedia isn’t always reliable (at the time of writing his page states that he scored 35,555 goals in 15 games for Avai, which seems excessive even for him) but it tells us that Leeds are his fifth club before the age of 24. Meaning a typical club’s love affair with Raphinha has the life expectancy of a gas truck driver in a Bruce Willis movie.

Rennes fans, I get it now. I understand the outpouring of gallic fury when we took him away from you. You knew you were punching above your weight with Raphinha and you still made the fatal error of falling for him. Because how can you not? It doesn’t excuse the fish and chip slander, but that’s what unrequited love can do to you. And now we’ve fallen for him as well, so maybe this affair will end with our fans hurling bratwurst slurs at a moneyed Bundesliga club.

There I go again. I’m spoiling Raphinha. It’s almost a reflex. Every time he does something incredible, like nutmegging Said Benrahma or causing a Colombian defender to faceplant, I feel compelled to remind myself to enjoy him while he’s here. And it’s precisely this urge that stops me enjoying him. Because I don’t want to imagine a future when Raphinha isn’t dancing through leaden-footed Premier League defences, or worse, is doing it in the colours of a club I don’t like.

Raphinha, with his gift for spontaneous genius, deserves to be enjoyed in the moment. The eternal conundrum, as far as Leeds fans are concerned, is that we are famously bad at doing that, and with good reason. When you’ve been knocked down so many times you anticipate the blow before it falls. We spend our lives in the brace position, damage limitation mode, spoiling Raphinha.

I wish I could fall in love with him like I fell in love with Harry Kewell all those years ago, before the world turned on its head and left me aggrieved and cynical. I wish I could un-learn everything bitter experience has taught me about the power balance of football. I wish I could believe, as I naively did as a ten year old, that my favourite players will stay with Leeds forever, because why would they want to be anywhere else? That’s how Raphinha should be enjoyed. I envy those who are still young or naive enough, and I’ll do my best not to spoil Raphinha for them.

Of course, anyone who believes Raphinha will be here forever is going to end up stranded on a railway line, firmly in the path of an onrushing disappointment train. They’re going to get hurt. But getting hurt is part of the Faustian pact you sign when you fall in love with Leeds United. If we’re honest with ourselves, when the time comes to say goodbye to Raphinha it’s going to hurt like buggery, no matter how hard we brace for impact.

I started writing this just after Raphinha scored twice for Brazil, while he was in the air trying to make it to Southampton away, like Superman racing to disarm a nuclear bomb. He got there, and it is probably the coolest thing a Leeds player has ever done. He’s practically a superhero. But Marcelo Bielsa decided not to risk him in the game, and we saw what it’s like beyond even a superhero’s help.

To put it another way, if you’re a citizen of Metropolis it doesn’t matter how much you prepare yourself for the day Superman is no longer around to save you. When the bomb goes off, you’ll be just as dead as everyone else. So you might as well not worry.

I hope the slightly tortured metaphor above helps you stop spoiling Raphinha. If I’m honest, it hasn’t helped me, and I wrote it. A few of us, probably including me, are going to wake up the day after he departs and realise we spent so long reminding ourselves to enjoy him while he’s here that we never got around to actually enjoying him.

I need help. I need to break out of this Kafka-esque spiral that can only end one way. Yoga, hypnosis, voodoo, Paul McKenna, I’ll try anything. Help me stop spoiling Raphinha. Before it’s too late.