Raphinha has 12 goals in seven games, and no Barcelona player including Messi has started a season like it
Youssouf Fofana put Sevilla ahead after 19 minutes at the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan. Raphinha answered three minutes later and kept going until he had the kind of hat-trick Lionel Messi never once managed in 17 seasons at the club.
Sep 20, 2026
Sevilla led for three minutes. Youssouf Fofana headed in Felix Correia’s cross on 19 minutes at the Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan, Raphinha levelled on 22, and by the time the Brazilian had finished his hat-trick Barcelona were 3-1 winners with a perfect record through seven La Liga matches.
A hat-trick Messi never managed
Raphinha scored his three with a header, his right foot and his left. That combination has a name in Spain and a very short list attached to it. Lionel Messi scored 36 La Liga hat-tricks across 17 seasons at Barcelona and never once got all three in the same game. The last Barcelona player to do it was Luis Suarez, in 2015.
Sevilla’s opener was their best moment of the night and close to their only one. Correia found Fofana, the header went in, and the home end had about as long to enjoy it as it takes to read this paragraph. Then Raphinha started running at a back line with no answer for him, and both of his second-half goals arrived from Lamine Yamal deliveries.
Twelve goals in seven games
Raphinha has 12 league goals from Barcelona’s first seven matches. No Barcelona player in the club’s history has scored that many that early in a season, and that includes Messi.
Widen it to the whole division and the company gets thin. This century only Cristiano Ronaldo has started better, with 13 after seven games in 2014-15. Go back further and the only other name is Echeverria, in 1942. That is the entire list.
He leads the division’s scoring charts by a stretch, and this was his second hat-trick in consecutive league matches, which is not a sentence anyone expected to be writing about a 29-year-old winger in September.
Yamal took a record off Vinicius Junior
Yamal’s two assists brought a milestone of his own. At 19 years and 68 days he became the youngest player to reach 50 La Liga assists, taking the mark off Vinicius Junior, who got there at 22 years and 298 days in May 2023.
There is something strange about a player collecting career-total records while still four years short of his prime. Yamal has been in the first team long enough now that his numbers keep turning up in categories normally filled by men a decade older than him.
Six points clear, and the derby is next
Seven wins from seven puts Hansi Flick’s side on 21 points, six ahead of Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid, who have a game in hand and play it on Sunday afternoon at Atletico. Sevilla stay fifth. That is worth saying, because the scoreline makes them sound worse than they are: this was a decent side being taken apart, not a bad one.
Barcelona have not dropped a point in their title defence. October brings harder fixtures and the run will end somewhere, but nothing in Seville suggested the champions are planning to make this interesting.