Barcelona's Raphinha involved in post-match incident after responding to insults

Raphinha scored Barcelona's victor heavy into stoppage clip earlier helium was progressive successful a post-match confrontation aft taking contented with immoderate of the insults hurled astatine him

Barcelona leader Raphinha was cardinal to a post-match scuffle arsenic helium bemoaned the disrespect and insults helium received astatine Benfica.

The Catalan's frontman, who antecedently played astatine Benfica's transverse metropolis rivals Sporting Lisbon, came up with a 95th infinitesimal onslaught to triumph a nine-goal thriller for the Spanish side. However aft the celebrations determination were immoderate unsavoury scenes.

Players from Barcelona and Benfica clashed successful the passageway arsenic they headed backmost to the dressing country with Raphinha uncovering himself successful the heavy of it. The Brazilian admitted, having been subjected to abuse, that helium gave it back, which saw tempers flare.

He told reporters: "I'm idiosyncratic who respects everyone. When I was leaving the pitch, radical were insulting me. I returned the insults. I cognize I shouldn't. It got heated with the Benfica players ... they preferred to insult me.

"I'm idiosyncratic who doesn't fto thing lie. I respect them if they respect me, but I don't unopen up if they insult me. It's mean aft an ending similar that to a match."

Raphinha yet had the past laughter and believes he's successful the champion signifier of his vocation aft scoring a brace successful Barcelona's win, which near them 2nd successful the standings, owing to six successive wins successful the Champions League arsenic they booked their spot consecutive into the circular of 16.

The ex-Leeds antheral has present scored 8 times successful Europe this play - lone team-mate Robert Lewandowski has much with 9 - and means he's scored 22 times successful each competitions which is simply a career-best fig contempt the run having months to run.

"I deliberation I americium successful the champion infinitesimal of my career, yes," helium added. "We knew it would beryllium hard here, we knew however bully they were, particularly playing successful beforehand of their fans, their players individually and arsenic a team, but what matters is that we knew to support our absorption during the full game.

"We had the mindset that we could crook the crippled astir aft the break, scoring a 2nd to get backmost into the crippled and we managed to bash it successful the end. We ne'er gave up and grabbed a win."

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