Great, Raphinha is going to win the Ballon d'Or, that's great, just great

I'd mentally shoved the football after-effects of Raphinha's transfer to Barcelona into some future month where future me could deal with it better than present me might, a week after he left, mithered by a heatwave. I could easily imagine the season getting underway then one weekend realising, oh, the clásico will be on, I'll watch Raphinha; or checking him out in the group stages of the ill-timed and placed World Cup. That all seemed fine.

Instead, the only good things I can say about his debut for Barcelona last night are that, well, at least Raphinha is happy, and at least he embarrassed a Neville. Meanwhile his immediate ascension to heir of Messi, saviour of Camp Nou and world star of all football is just absolutely wonderful to hear about, and £50m looks a great transfer fee for the second coming of Pele and Ronaldinho combined, just super business.

And he only played the first half!

Checking YouTube for videos mentioning Raphinha and uploaded today produces countless results already. I hope this is somehow linked to the add-ons Leeds put onto his transfer to Barcelona: if the highlights videos reach a certain level of ???????????? per hour it triggers another half-million that Barca can't afford. In the meantime, his performance in this 6-0 win over Inter Miami supports Joan Laporte's madcap scheme to mortgage the club's future stability for a very cool and exciting present. It was 3-0 at half-time when Raphinha was taken off, and he'd scored one of them, assisted the other two, and created a missed chance for a fourth. If Barca's bet is that, instead of a few boring seasons rebuilding, they can keep sponsor, merch and television revenue rolling in if they keep being exciting to watch, then Raphinha looks a very sound investment of their economically leveraged summer gains.