Raphinha as Barcelona’s No. 9: The Dembele blueprint Flick could be following | OneFootball

For all the discussion around Barcelona’s search for a new centre-forward, Hansi Flick may have already identified the ideal solution.

It does not look like the traditional answer. There is no towering reference point occupying both centre-backs, no striker permanently stationed between the posts and no obvious successor to Robert Lewandowski.

Instead, there is Raphinha. What initially looked like a temporary adjustment has rapidly become one of the stories of Barcelona’s season.

Raphinha has scored eight goals in his first six competitive appearances, finding the net in every game except the win vs Levante, while operating as Flick’s central attacking reference.

Six have come in five La Liga matches, followed by another two in Barcelona’s 5-1 Champions League demolition of Feyenoord.

Barcelona have won all six games and scored 26 goals along the way. And somewhere in Paris, they have already seen where this kind of idea can lead.

Ousmane Dembele joined PSG as a winger. Under Luis Enrique, he eventually became something much harder to define.

Not quite a striker, not quite a false nine and certainly not the touchline winger Barcelona once knew.

The transformation ended with goals, a Champions League title and the 2025 Ballon d’Or. Flick may now be exploring a similar road with Raphinha.

The No. 9 who does not behave like one

By the time Barcelona travelled to Valencia, Flick was no longer treating the experiment as an emergency.

“Raphinha is our best option in the number nine position,” the German explained before the game.

Flick has unleashed the best version of Raphinha. (Photo by Alex Caparros/Getty Images)

He pointed towards the Brazilian’s natural tendency to move inside, along with his pressing, intensity and speed.

Raphinha’s role is not built around waiting. He moves towards the ball. He drifts into midfield. He pulls towards the channels.

He runs beyond the defensive line. When Barcelona lose possession, he is expected to become the first player chasing it back.

Then, suddenly, he becomes the striker again. He has the engine to pull off that role. The numbers are becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss.

Two goals and an assist against Elche. One against Athletic Club. Another brace against Rayo Vallecano. A goal at Valencia. Then two more against Feyenoord, followed by a couple of assists vs Levante.

Six league goals in five games have made him La Liga’s early leading scorer, while five goals and an assist during August earned him the competition’s Player of the Month award.

That is perhaps because Flick is not really trying to convert Raphinha into a conventional nine. He is simply putting him in a role that maximises his strengths and minimises the team’s striker problem.

The Ousmane Dembele precedent

That is where the comparison with Dembele becomes interesting. Luis Enrique’s great adjustment at PSG was never simply about putting a winger in the middle and asking him to score more goals.

It was about removing some of the restrictions that came with starting wide. Dembele later acknowledged that being repositioned as a No. 9 helped him significantly.

Just as importantly, he spoke about the work required without the ball, particularly the positioning and intensity needed when pressing centre-backs and goalkeepers.

The resulting numbers eventually became extraordinary. Dembele finished 2024-25 with 37 goals and 15 assists, won the Champions League Player of the Season award and lifted the Ballon d’Or.

Ousmane Dembele has successfully transitioned into a centre-forward at PSG. (Photo by Lars Baron/Getty Images)

However, his importance to PSG went well beyond finishing. In Europe, he scored eight goals and supplied six assists in 15 Champions League appearances.

His tendency to press from the front and set the tone for his teammates, along with his habit of dropping deeper to create superiority in midfield, caught everyone by surprise.

PSG’s central attacker became the first defender without the ball and one of the hardest players to locate with it.

Luis Enrique slowly redefined the striker role from a position defined by occupation to one defined by constant movement.

Raphinha was already halfway there

There is, however, one important distinction between the two situations.

Dembele’s repositioning accompanied a dramatic personal transformation. Raphinha’s career does not need one.

His great reinvention under Flick has already happened. During the 2024-25 campaign, Raphinha scored 34 goals and provided 22 assists across 57 appearances.

He went from being a player whose future had repeatedly generated transfer discussion to one of the faces of Flick’s Barcelona, eventually finishing fifth in the Ballon d’Or voting.

Even then, he was never really playing as a normal left winger. He repeatedly moved inside into No. 10 positions, attacking the gaps around Lewandowski rather than simply holding width.

Back then, Lewandowski was the reference point and Raphinha was the player who provided the movement around him.

It is less a reinvention than another stage of the same evolution.

Six matches, though, are still not a transformation.

There will be games when Barcelona face a deep defensive block and movement alone cannot disorganise it. There will be moments when crosses arrive and Flick wants somebody fighting between two centre-backs.

Not a permanent fix. (Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images)

There will be Champions League nights when Barcelona require a forward capable of receiving with his back to goal.

Raphinha cannot suddenly become every type of striker at once, nor should Barça expect him to evolve into that.

The arrival of Gabriel Jesus reinforces that point. Barcelona now have a recognised centre-forward capable of offering Flick a different profile.

However, there is no doubt that Raphinha will be Barça’s starting striker this season while the squad remains as it is.

A Dembele transformation, or something different?

The lesson of Dembele at PSG was not that every winger should become a striker.

It was that the traditional boundaries between positions can sometimes hide what makes an attacker special.

Dembele became more dangerous when Luis Enrique moved him away from the touchline and made the attack revolve around his movement.

Flick may be discovering something similar with Raphinha. There is also a neat historical symmetry to it. When Dembele won the Ballon d’Or in 2025, Raphinha finished fifth.

Two of Europe’s most productive forwards had travelled very different roads to reach the same shortlist.

Now their paths appear to be crossing tactically as well. Perhaps the question is no longer whether Raphinha can become Barcelona’s No. 9.

Perhaps Flick has realised that the more interesting possibility is building a Barcelona in which nobody needs to know exactly where the No. 9 is.

PSG have reaped the benefits of this uncertainty for a couple of seasons, and it may be time for Barça to do the same.