Raphinha's 12 in 7: Messi beaten, Ronaldo in sight

Twelve goals in seven La Liga games, back-to-back hat-tricks and a five-goal lead in the Pichichi race. Raphinha has passed Messi's mark and is two from Ronaldo's.

There are good starts, there are historic starts, and then there is whatever Raphinha is doing. The Barcelona captain has 12 goals in seven La Liga matches this season, has just scored back-to-back hat-tricks, and leads the Pichichi race by a frankly absurd five goals. On Saturday 19 September at the Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán, he helped himself to three more and went past a mark only Messi had come close to at the Camp Nou this century.

The context makes it even better. Hansi Flick's Barcelona have won all seven league games they have played — 21 points from 21 — and sit clear at the top of the table. This is not a hot streak inside a middling side. It is a winger in the form of his life inside the most in-form team in Europe.

Raphinha's 12 La Liga goals, game by game

This has not been one freak afternoon followed by silence. Raphinha has scored in six of the seven matchdays played, and in the one game he drew a blank his team still put four past the opposition. Here is the full run:

Seven games, twelve goals, an average of 1.7 a match. And the two hat-tricks came three days apart: Racing Santander on 16 September, Sevilla on the 19th.

Messi's mark is gone. Ronaldo's is two goals away

The comparison doing the rounds is a fair one. Lionel Messi managed 11 goals in his first seven league games of 2017-18, and that stood as the best start by a Barcelona player in more than eighty years. Raphinha has already beaten it. Only one number is left in front of him: the 13 Cristiano Ronaldo scored in seven matches for Real Madrid in 2014-15.

Two goals. That is the entire gap between the Barcelona captain and the modern benchmark for a scoring start in Spain. If you want to follow how the 2026-27 table shifts week by week, the full season archive has every matchday and result.

Who is actually chasing him

The striking thing about the scoring charts is not the names on them — it is the gap. Raphinha is five clear of the chasing pack, and we are only seven games in.

1. Raphinha (Barcelona) — 12 goals
2. Lamine Yamal (Barcelona) — 7 goals
3. Kylian Mbappé (Real Madrid) — 7 goals
4. Sergio Camello — 7 goals

That Lamine Yamal and Mbappé are on seven and still look a long way back tells you everything. Yamal deserves his own headline, mind: he has already matched a Messi record with three braces this season.

Flick's Barcelona: the best start in the club's history

Raphinha is not doing this alone, and that is the part that explains the numbers. Barcelona have now won seven consecutive competitive matches — the best start in the club's entire history. The previous record was six, and it had been set three times across nearly a century: 1929-30, 1960-61 and 2018-19.

• Seven wins from seven in La Liga — a perfect 21 points
• 31 league goals scored in seven matches
• Only seven conceded
• Four games with five goals or more: Elche, Rayo, Valencia and Racing

The 7-2 against Racing Santander and the 5-0 at Mestalla are the side in miniature: constant rotation, no drop in intensity. Sevilla arrived on 13 points from a possible 18 — their best opening in several seasons — and held on until Raphinha decided the thing on his own.

What a perfect run does to your predictions

A team winning every single game is, on paper, a predictor's dream: the home win picks itself. The trouble with perfect runs is precisely that — when everyone backs the same result, getting it right buys you no advantage over anyone else. The separation comes from the mid-table fixtures, and from the goal-total tiebreaker at the bottom of the slip.

• Long-streak favourites pay nothing: you need them right, but they will not win you the week
• The fixture list matters — Barcelona have not yet faced Real Madrid, Atlético or Betis
• Watch the rest of the top: Real Madrid and Betis both have 15 points with a game in hand
• High-scoring sides swing the goal-total tiebreaker, where you predict each team's goals

If you want the fixtures, kick-off times and prediction window for what comes next, they are on the matchday 8 page. And if the Spanish quiniela format is new to you, the how it works guide covers it in five minutes.

Two goals from a twelve-year-old record

Barcelona's next run of fixtures is hardly punishing, and Raphinha goes into the international break with his confidence somewhere in orbit. Two goals separate him from Cristiano Ronaldo. Nobody sensible expects a rate like this to hold for a whole season — averages have a way of reasserting themselves — but right now the Brazilian is writing the best scoring start Barcelona have seen in eighty years.

Which is the real pleasure of following a league season: arguing about it with someone. If you like putting numbers on your hunches, you can start a prediction league with your friends on quiniPrats and see who reads the weekend best. No pressure — just the quiet satisfaction of being right before they are.