Why Improving Ivan Rakitic Is Proving to Be Barcelona's Unsung Hero

Sometimes a look at a Barcelona teamsheet is a lesson in patience.

You can be so drawn to the three stellar names in the Catalans’ front line that you can tend to skip over the rest of the team, just seeing them as merely there to provide the bullets for the big guns to fire.

Lionel Messi, Luis Suarez and Neymar will always hog both the headlines and the attention, but that doesn’t mean that the other eight in the XI are irrelevant, and far from it.

And Barcelona were right to point that out on Monday by highlighting the performances of midfielder Ivan Rakitic, who opened the scoring in Saturday’s 2-0 success at Real Betis, which has put the club just two wins away from another La Liga title.

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It was hardly a goal for the ages, with the Croatian benefitting from an error from Betis’ former Real Madrid goalkeeper Antonio Adan, but it was another incidence of Rakitic scoring the first goal of the game—something that Barca revealed he is pretty adept at in an article on their official website.

As they state, over half of the former Sevilla’s midfielder’s goals for the club have been the opening strike of the game—nine from a total of 17.

Of course, those goals include the strike in Berlin last June when Rakitic got on the end of a sweeping move to score just four minutes into the UEFA Champions League final against Juventus, helping to ensure that his first season at the club would end with the highest of highs and a remarkable treble.

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Atletico Madrid have ensured that that won’t be possible again this season, but with the league title homing into view and a Copa del Rey final against his former employers to come at the end of the month, Rakitic will be loving life having long since proved that he was, in the words of that Barcelona website article linked to above, a “great pickup.”

Indeed, the club also state that the Croatian lies sixth in the list of minutes played in Luis Enrique’s team this season, behind only the magical front three and club stalwarts Sergio Busquets and Javier Mascherano.

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And it is not hard to see why he has become such a key player.

Sometimes, the quality of the Barca front three can lead to players simply standing, watching and wondering what they will do next, but not Rakitic.

Unlike some of the club’s other midfielders in the recent past and indeed the present, the Croatian has shown that he is not afraid to break the lines and the get into the penalty area when the opportunity arises, perhaps when one or both of Messi or Neymar has got involved in a move a little deeper on the pitch, and Suarez needs some support up front.

Effectively coming into the club as a replacement for Cesc Fabregas in the summer of 2014, Rakitic obviously wasn’t as schooled in the “Barcelona way” as the now-Chelsea midfielder, but he has complemented both Suarez and Neymar in adding a cutting edge to the Camp Nou glamour. Adding cut to the thrust and purpose to the possession.

With Xavi now gone and Andres Iniesta’s goalscoring powers declining as he has grown older, there was an opportunity there for Rakitic to firmly establish himself as one of the premier attacking midfield players in Europe at the Camp Nou, and he has grasped it with both hands.

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The realisation that Fabregas’ best work perhaps comes a little deeper seemed to be why the club were willing to let him go, even if that seemed a little surprising at the time, but almost two years on, no-one is complaining about the presence of Rakitic.

Set to be a key player for Croatia at the European Championships in the summer when he’ll face Turkey, the Czech Republic and plenty of his Barca teammates in the Spain team, Rakitic’s midfield partnership with Luka Modric will be key to his nation’s hopes.

He might have to play a little bit deeper in France—where the role of Real Madrid’s Mateo Kovacic will also complement his—but he’ll be just as important as he is for Barca, probably more.

If he can get an opening goal or two, then his side will have every chance of going far, just as Barca look like continuing to do, partly in thanks to their unsung hero.