The Alcantara children haggle, stick, cry and laugh with the ball in an empty Balaidos . They will be less than ten years old and wait for Mazinho , captain of Celta , to take them back home.

That image of the late 90s summarizes why for the Alcantara Vigo it is 'home'. The eldest, Thiago , was born in Italy and the little one, Rafinha , in Brazil because of the small trips around the world that his father gave, but it was in Galicia where they took root. There he played four years, played 138 games and discovered the first memories of his children, who grew up, personally and football, in the Rías Baixas.

Al Celta, who in the late 90's did not have a large quarry, both escaped. Mazinho tells that he tried to put them in the club but that the templates were complete. They played in Ureca, a team from the municipality of Nigrán, and although Rafinha came to play a tournament with them, they did not step on A Madroa dressed in light blue. Of course, every two Sundays they were like a clock in Balaidos. A couple of years later, Barcelona took them to La Masía and Vigo became a morriña.

" Nai e Celtista, I'm coming home ." In the summer of 2013, Rafinha, with 20 years and having played a couple of official matches with Barça, arrived at Luis Enrique's Celta for his first experience in the elite. It was unbeatable: elected Player Revelation of La Liga and fulfilled his "childhood dream". "This beautiful celestial with whom I have grown as a person and as a footballer," he wrote in his farewell with a "see you soon" that at that time sounded unreal. Rafinha was a budding world star .

Luis Enrique signed for Barça and the Brazilian set a good preseason. He ended up playing 36 games that year and getting a place in the rotation of a team that won the League, the Cup and the Champions League. He started 15-16 as a starter in the European Super Cup and in the first match of the group stage of the Champions League came the beginning of his ordeal: an entry from the Roma midfielder Nainggolan caused him a broken leg crusader . Six months off. He was 22 years old, and eight days earlier he had scored his first goal with the Brazilian national team.

He returned in May 2016. It was his turn to start over. In the following season he managed to recover the role and played 28 games, until the meniscus was injured in March 2017 . 258 days out. He returned in January 2018. Midway through a club that fought for everything and could not afford the time it took to get in rhythm. He was assigned to Inter Milan , where he was indisputable in the second half of Serie A and regained sensations, although not enough for the Italian club to execute the demanding purchase option on him. Sano, was willing to win a place on the staff of Ernesto Valverde, but it could not be: in November of that year, in the Wanda Metropolitano, the crusader of the left knee was broken . Start again.

Because of its two crusaders and its meniscus, the second coming of Rafinha Alcantara to Vigo has been very different from the first. This is a kind of resurrection . He has returned to 'home' seven years older, with scars on both legs, with the aura of a future lost star and with the need to recover everything . A case similar to Iago Aspas : 'home' as a solution to all problems. He acknowledges that there was "a question of adaptation" during the first weeks in the club, but that adaptation, they count in the environment, is not only summarized in his arrival, but in his physical and mental level. In fear, logical and human, to the most feared injury by a footballer and to the genetics of the Alcántara knees , who withdrew his father and who has also been angry with his brother.

Rafinha and the doctors take care of every detail, every gesture and every nuisance. So if the staff trains in double session he does the second part in the gym. And that's why he has had to wait until January, many games and sensations later, to offer his best level of the season. A moment that has coincided, and not by chance, with the best face of the Celtic that today appears in the spotlights of the Bernabéu .

Óscar García highlights his involvement, both in the game and in a locker room that has had to make an effort to lose the fear of descent. Something vital, perhaps, in the future of Rafinha, which ends contract with Barça in 2021 and will leave the Catalan club this summer. The price: 17 million that Celta, if saved, could be willing to assume. He lets himself be loved between the lines: "I have to give my maximum here." His mother also lives in Vigo, sometimes Mazinho, who has already become a "father of", approaches his childhood friends and lives in a central apartment, relieved since the famous ferris wheel placed by Abel Caballero stopped generating noise at The doors of his house. "Finally," he published the day he was removed.

We'll see if next Christmas he catches her blue.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • football
  • RC Celta of Vigo
  • Real Madrid

LaLiga Santander 2019 - 2020Zidane "does not contemplate" Bale's departure but leaves him off the list for the derby

LaLiga Santander 2019 - 2020Casemiro, with ax and gloves, raises Madrid to a good Sevilla

LaLiga Santander 2019 - 2020Zidane: "I accept that I can have a flower, nothing happens"