Raphinha acknowledged feeling far from his peak fitness but insisted that the minutes were crucial as he works his way back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said: “I’m trying to find my best form. I’m not fit to play 90 minutes, but when I’m on the pitch, I try to give my all. I felt the fatigue in the second half. I’m working very hard to get back to my best. I try to give my best when I’m on the field. Being able to start in the eleven makes me happy. I want to help the team and I’m leaving satisfied.”<\/p>\n
He also admitted that his vocal leadership on the pitch can sometimes feel excessive to teammates. He added: “I feel like I’m being a bit of a nuisance, sometimes too much. But I think pressing is important. I’m sure that on the pitch, my teammates sometimes think I talk too much. But I’m going to demand more from those who can give much more. I take responsibility, and in the locker room, we all hugged each other to celebrate the victory. I always say that the best defence starts with a good attack. It’s the most important thing we can do to help the defence. I try to press to make their job easier. I try to press to take up space from the other team’s centre-backs and thus recover the ball more easily. It’s good when the team follows me when I press, but I do it without thinking. I just run to win the ball back.”<\/p>\n
Raphinha agreed that Barcelona are far from their peak, acknowledging there is much to tighten tactically and technically.<\/p>\n
“The manager felt we could do more on the pitch; we know it too,” he said. “That’s his feeling. That the team isn’t at its best, I agree, and we have to improve a lot. But the important thing was to win. I’m sure we’ll come back and win games by playing well. But if there are games we win playing badly, I don’t care, the important thing is to win.”<\/p>\n
Barcelona now shift their focus to Tuesday night\u2019s blockbuster encounter against Atletico Madrid at Camp Nou.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raphinha acknowledged feeling far from his peak fitness but insisted that the minutes were crucial as he works…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,937,179517,179514,596,179515,41288,179516,85],"class_list":["post-318132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-barcelona","tag-barcelona-vs-deportivo-alaves","tag-deportivo-alaves","tag-football","tag-h-flick","tag-laliga","tag-raphinha","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}