Barcelona midfielder Ivan Rakitic has compared teammate Lionel Messi to renowned Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi.
Messi, along with teammates Neymar and Luis Suarez, scored most of the goals and bagged the majority of the headlines as Barca won the Champions League, La Liga and Copa del Rey treble last season.
They have put themselves into a position to repeat that this season, clear at the top of the league, in the final of the Copa and the quarterfinals in Europe.
Rakitic has also played an important if more understated role in such successes, with his hard running and clever positioning playing a key part in Luis Enrique's more 'direct Barca team since joining from Sevilla for €20 million in summer 2014.
Speaking to El Pais ahead of Saturday's Clasico against Real Madrid at the Camp Nou, the Croatia international revealed that he had studied architecture as a youngster and saw lots of parallels between the requirements to succeed in that profession and his current job.
Gaudi's most famous work is the Sagrada Familia, a Roman Catholic church in Barcelona.
"Just talent is not enough," Rakitic said. "If you take the best in every position, it will not be the best team.
"We can speak about Gaudi -- he was a genius, he had unique ideas. But behind him there was a maths expert, with a structural plan, to support the genius idea. Or he would not have put up those buildings. They would be very pretty, but they would fall down.
"If Messi were an architect he would be Gaudi, [Jacques] Herzog & [Pierre] De Meuron, [Norman] Foster and the minimalism of [Ludwig] Mies van der Rohe. I would be his assistant, as I am now."
Rakitic was Sevilla's undisputed star and team leader, but said he accepts his current role at the Camp Nou, while stressing that Messi, Suarez and Neymar also do their fair share of the hard work.
"They know that behind them they have a support, and we know we have them," he said. "We work hard to win games and if they help us that is good for everyone.
"[Messi, Neymar, Suarez] also run, and sacrifice themselves for the others, and score their goals. The important thing is to be together and make a common effort."
Barcelona held their first full training session since the international break on Thursday evening after the return of their South American players.
"After a round of international fixtures which saw 18 FC Barcelona players head off to represent their countries, Luis Enrique was finally able to call on all of his squad members during Thursday's session," said a club statement read.
"Leo Messi, Javier Mascherano, Dani Alves, Luis Suarez, Marc-Andre ter Stegen, Thomas Vermaelen and Arda Turan were back at Ciutat Esportiva to continue preparations for Saturday's game against Real Madrid.
"Luis Enrique also chose [Rafa] Mujica and [Alex] Carbonell from the U19s to train with the first team. On Friday, at 6.00pm CET, the team will train again in the final session before El Clasico."