Despite the Clasico defeat: Raphinha follows in Cristiano Ronaldo's footsteps

An exceptional individual achievement

Barcelona lost El Clasico to Real Madrid, but Raphinha walked away with a prize of his own. The Brazilian kept rewriting the La Liga record books with his goalscoring, echoing a feat Cristiano Ronaldo managed in a Real shirt more than a decade ago.

Raphinha scored Barcelona's only goal in the 1-2 defeat at the Camp Nou on Sunday, in the tenth round of the Spanish league. He levelled the game in the 61st minute, only for Kylian Mbappe to snatch the winner in the 87th.

According to the "Tribuna" website, Raphinha is the first player to score 13 goals in the first ten rounds of a Spanish league season since Cristiano Ronaldo, who hit an extraordinary tally for Real Madrid in the 2014-2015 campaign.

That year Ronaldo scored 17 goals in his first ten league matches. The benchmark stood untouched for over a decade, until Raphinha closed in on it with a blistering start to the current season.