As you’ll be aware, it was a big year for Brazilian transfers this summer and two of the biggest were Raphinha joining Barcelona from Leeds United and Antony joining Manchester United.
The latter moved to the Camp Nou in a £52.2m deal following two very successful years at Leeds, where he had been the star of the show under Marcelo Bielsa and then Jesse Marsch.
Antony, meanwhile, joined Manchester United in an £85.5m deal from Ajax following two very successful years in the Dutch capital.
Both will likely be fighting it out for a place in Tite’s Brazil squad for the World Cup in Qatar this winter, but it seems that they were also once potential competitors for a move to Barcelona.
Sport cover the situation today and explain why Xavi and Jordi Cruyff went for Raphinha and ‘ruled out’ Antony in the process.
They state that in a ‘thorough analysis’ the Barcelona pair deemed Raphinha a ‘more complete player’ than the Manchester United man.
According to their information the former Leeds man has a ‘collective conception’ of the game while his price was much better than compared to the €95m United paid for Antony.
As far as they’re concerned Raphinha is already a success from an ‘economic and sporting’ point of view, particularly compared to Antony.
They compared him with Antony and carried out an ‘exhaustive footballing analysis’, believing the work Raphinha had done under Bielsa at Leeds had developed him better than Antony at Ajax.
According to them, Raphinha is ‘absolutely involved’ in the improvement of the team while the new Manchester United star relies on one-on-ones and ‘resolving actions alone’, thus ‘disconnecting himself from the rest of his team’s attack’.
This is something Jordi Cruyff saw for himself during his constant trips to Amsterdam, so they went with Raphinha.
There was also no debate from a financial point of view either as the deal with Leeds is seen a ‘negotiating success’ for Barcelona while Manchester United paid a ‘madness’ to Ajax.
In fact, there was €42m between the two deals, a sum Barcelona used to complete the signing of Robert Lewandowski from Bayern Munich.
That deal is also working out and, as far as Sport are concerned, the decision to sign Raphinha from Leeds and leave Antony for Manchester United could be the best that the Catalans have made in years.
