Bruh, narrative??
. You asked me about "what defensive stats is Busi even better in" as if you knew you were right, and then I answered directly basically shitting on your entire premise. Busi has ALWAYS been superior to Rakitic in defensive stats. In fact if you came at me with this shit 7-8 months ago before Rakitic got the biggest, most random hype train ever then people would laugh at you. You want to make it seem like me answering your question directly is "manipulating some narrative". No it's not.
You brought up aerial duels, Rakitic has never had a season averaging more aerial duels than Busquets either. Again and again you try to shift the goalposts of the argument and get made a fool of every single time. I literally predicted that you would back away from your "defensive stats" argument when it was proven to be outstandingly wrong, and then veer into "oh but what Rakitic does goes so much beyond stats" zone. Which you then proceeded to do exactly, as if Rakitic has better IQ and defensive intangibles than Sergio freaking Busquets.
You're embarrassing yourself man. "Duels won" literally means tackles aerial duels, Busquets is historically higher in both by some margin. Interceptions, also favors Busquets. Covering ground? Rakitic's supposed iron lungs are so overblown it's crazy, every CL game out there that publishes distance covered stats shows Busi running FAR more than Rakitic. Like 3-4km more. Also in the World Cup Busquets ran more km per game than Rakitic, 10.8km per game vs 10.3. Why is this? Because Rakitic is ALWAYS walking in attack, nonstop. And because people wildly overstate how much his workrate is on both ends.
So what exactly does your argument stand on? You made such a big deal out of performances and stats and could not be more wrong on either point.