Barcelona’s dominant win over Borussia Dortmund witnessed a lot of drama. One of these dramatic moments was when Raphinha “stole” Pau Cubarsí’s almost certain goal.
Hansi Flick’s side gave a class-A performance, as the match ended 4-0. Raphinha opened the scoring in the 25th minute. The goal came after Cubarsí made the shot.
Raphinha then ended up sliding in to make sure that the ball went in. This attributed the goal to him instead of Cubarsí. Many Barcelona fans believed that the ball was going in even if Raphinha didn’t intervene.
Fans held their breath as VAR debated whether Raphinha was offside or not. The goal, however, was allowed. Thankfully, Barcelona managed to score more goals to secure their winning, as Robert Lewandowski scored twice and Lamine Yamal once.
Following the match, Raphinha spoke about the whole situation, especially since fans claimed that he stole Cubarsí’s goal. According to ESPN, the Brazilian said:
“I was worried on the first goal if I was offside, it’s good that it was given. I apologized to Cubarsí. He told me no worries, he’d count it as an assist. I thought the ball was going wide; it was an instinctive decision.”
Raphinha is having a great season that is for the history books. During the Champions League so far, the Brazilian has 19 contributions with 12 of them being goals. He spoke about his outstanding form as well.
“I love playing with top-level players. We know each other really well on the pitch and that is important. We’re achieving spectacular numbers and we hope we keep going like this.”
In all honesty, the whole debate on how Raphinha “stole” Cubarsí’s goal is unnecessary. He is a professional player whose job is to score goals. As he already said, it was his instinct to make sure that the ball went in.
The fact that people are dragging him is simply an exaggeration. Even Marca had something to say about the matter as they wrote, “In short, the Brazilian ‘stole’ the goal from his teammate. That’s something you just don’t do, especially not to a kid like Cubarsí, who was making his Champions League debut with that goal.”
It doesn’t matter a lot when it comes to who scored what. At the end of the day, fans want their team to win and scoring goals is the way to do that. Thankfully, Cubarsí was a good sport about it instead of being upset by the situation like some fans are. It would have been a different story if Raphinha was ruled offside.
I can’t complain about Raphinha stealing Cubarsí’s goal because I just want to watch Barcelona win. It’s a good thing that the players have great relationships under Flick’s leadership. In other teams, such a situation could have caused problems.
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