Leeds United’s Raphinha can go even further by taking team-mates with him, says Marcelo Bielsa

Another impressive international break wearing Brazil’s colours further enhanced the reputation of a winger who has scored five of Leeds’s 11 Premier League goals this season.

He will be in the spotlight again tomorrow, with his club at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for the Premier League’s main televised game of the day. Now that Brazil, who Raphinha only made his debut for last month, have qualified for a World Cup, he is likely to have another high-profile stage for his talents when the tournament starts in Qatar a year today.

Coach Marcelo Bielsa believes his team-mates will have a big bearing on how good the 24-year-old can be, and it could also dictate the Elland Road club’s chances of keeping hold of him.

“He is sufficiently good right now,” said Bielsa. “To regularly maintain performances like the ones he is achieving would be a great indicator and the other great challenge that the players that shine have is to transfer that evolution to his team-mates and to the team.

“Raphinha will be a lot better if the team is better and if his team-mates are better.

“The players that shine start by unbalancing by themselves, they manage to facilitate how their team-mates performs and that development of the collective game improves the team that they belong to, that contains them and that process is a great challenge.”

Leeds and Spurs have both had relatively disappointing starts to the season, in the visitors’ case taking just 11 points from as many league matches. Tomorrow’s visitors are still struggling with injuries, with no end yet in sight to Patrick Bamford, Luke Ayling and Robin Koch’s problems. In the exciting form of Raphinha they can have a player who can change things on his own, Bielsa would just prefer it if he did not have to.