Raphinha was left off the Ballon d’Or shortlist, and he has scored in all five of Barcelona’s games

Raphinha is not one of the 30 players on this year’s Ballon d’Or shortlist. Overnight, in the rain at Camp Nou, he scored after three minutes, scored again after 57, and Barcelona beat Feyenoord 5-1 on the opening night of their Champions League campaign.

Eight goals in five games

The brace took Raphinha to eight goals in Barcelona’s first five matches of the season. No Barcelona player has scored that many across the opening five games since Robert Lewandowski in 2022-23, and going back through the records to at least 2000, nobody else has scored in every one of the club’s first five fixtures of a campaign.

He was asked about it afterwards and did not make much of it. “The truth is that a season has its ups and downs, and to start this season gives us a lot of confidence,” he said.

Hansi Flick was left off the coaches’ list for the same awards, which is a strange thing to do to the man who has Barcelona playing like this.

Yamal’s free-kick, Adeyemi’s curler

Karim Adeyemi made it 2-0 in the 22nd minute with a curling finish, his second for Barcelona since arriving from Borussia Dortmund in the summer. Raphinha’s second came just before the hour. Then Lamine Yamal, who had already set up two goals, put a free-kick from 20 yards through a gap in the Feyenoord wall in the 77th minute.

That was Yamal’s 12th Champions League goal, which leaves him one short of the record Kylian Mbappe set as a teenager, and his 101st goal involvement for Barcelona. He is 19.

Sem Steijn pulled one back for Feyenoord in the 82nd minute. Three minutes later Gabriel Jesus, on from the bench for barely two minutes, headed in his first goal for the club since his move from Arsenal.

22 goals in five matches

Barcelona have now scored 22 goals in five games this season, more than they had managed at this stage of any season since 1950. Their goal difference is plus 19, the best after five matches since 1926. Four of the five have finished with Barcelona scoring five.

Numbers like that usually come with a caveat about the opposition. Feyenoord finished second in the Eredivisie last season and came to Catalonia to press rather than sit, and it made no difference at all.

The view from the other bench

Giovanni van Bronckhorst spent four years at Barcelona as a player, won two league titles and the 2006 Champions League there, and started the final in Paris. He came back on Wednesday as Feyenoord’s coach and watched his side get taken apart.

“If you watched the way they play, you will realise that Barcelona is the best team in the world right now,” he said afterwards. He added that they can win the Champions League this season, and that Yamal, who he compared to Lionel Messi and Ronaldinho, can win a Ballon d’Or. On the evidence of a wet Wednesday in Catalonia, none of that sounded like flattery.

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