“I would quit my job if Hansi Flick asked me to.”
The Athletic subscriber Jess A’s comment neatly sums up how Barcelona fans are feeling this week and how they view their manager.
Few — if anyone — expected the club’s season to start the way it has. Flick has turned around a team that was in crisis a few months ago and now, ahead of the 12th round of fixtures of the 2024-25 La Liga campaign, Barcelona are six points clear at the top of the table.
The Catalan club have had a very good fortnight. They beat Sevilla, reintegrated Gavi — who had not played for 11 months after suffering an ACL injury — and thrashed Bayern Munich in the Champions League. Then, to top it all off, they hammered Real Madrid 4-0 at the Bernabeu.
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And if that wasn’t enough, the club’s players performed well in the 2024 Ballon d’Or ceremony on Monday, with Aitana Bonmati winning the women’s main award and Lamine Yamal taking home the Kopa Trophy (which is presented to the best player in the world younger than the age of 21). Oh, and Barcelona Femeni won the women’s team of the year award too.
To get a full understanding of how Barcelona fans are feeling about the season so far, The Athletic conducted a survey among the club’s subscribers, asking them various questions relating to the current state of affairs at the Catalan side.
Here are the results.
Of the 412 respondents, 82.3 per cent of them think Barcelona have had an outstanding start to the season.
It is easy to understand why, given that Barcelona are already six points clear in La Liga and are fresh off the back of a stunning victory in the Spanish capital over arch-rivals Real Madrid. Slightly more than 17 per cent said the campaign has been very good so far and not a single respondent said the start to 2024-25 has been worse than good.
Flick, who was appointed head coach over the summer to replace the outgoing Xavi in difficult circumstances, has certainly performed well in his first few months.
This is all the more notable given the fact that many fans were furious at how Xavi’s departure as manager was handled.
The emotional exit of the former club captain, who made 767 appearances for the club as a player, was why there wasn’t an overwhelming sense of positivity among the fanbase when the German was appointed as his successor.
While slightly more than half of respondents were either happy or very happy with the club’s decision to hire the former Bayern Munich manager, more than a third of them were indifferent and more than 10 per cent were disappointed.
It is a completely different story to when it comes to assessing Flick now, however.
Every single fan surveyed is either happy or very happy with their manager, with a whopping 92.4 per cent of them very happy.
Given that Barcelona is a club with a very strong identity when it comes to its style of play, anybody who manages the club knows they will be judged on more than just results.
So we asked our subscribers whether they think the football Barcelona are playing under Flick, 59, is true to the Catalan club’s DNA of attacking play and lots of possession.
Just under half of respondents think the playing style the new manager has implemented is true to the club’s heritage. Meanwhile, 15.1 per cent of those surveyed do not think Flick’s style is acceptable at Barcelona. More than a third of subscribers, however, think it is too early to make a judgement just yet.
Reading some of the subscribers’ comments, it is clear this is a hotly-debated issue and one which is never likely to be fully agreed upon.
Harsha T said: “The style of play is quite obviously not ‘The Barca Way,’ but the team is stacked with La Masia products. In the most literal sense imaginable, the team’s DNA is composed of Barcelona-bred players. Even looking beyond playing style, that’s the core of the pride in the last great Barca generation.”
As well as conducting this online survey, The Athletic spoke to fans in person at the FC Barcelona store at Camp Nou to further gauge their opinions on the state of affairs at the club.
When asked about Flick’s style, Ferran Peral, 30, said: “It’s not quite Barca’s DNA, but the team is getting back to being competitive, which is something that had been lost in recent seasons. People confuse DNA with moving the ball around with endless possession. If you know how to play football, the ball has to move fast and this is the tricky part. Move the ball fast and well.”
There was more of a consensus among subscribers when they were asked if they were happier with their team’s style of play now than under Xavi.
A little more than 62 per cent of those asked said they were happier with the team’s approach under Flick, compared to just over 25 per cent who preferred it under Xavi.
Despite the impressive start to the season, almost 43 per cent of fans didn’t expect Barcelona to beat Real Madrid last weekend.
More than 57 per cent of them did think Flick’s team would triumph, but still, that is hardly an overwhelming number.
And there was no clear verdict when subscribers were asked what their favourite moment from the 4-0 win in El Clasico was.
Yamal’s goal topped the responses, but 22.3 per cent of people preferred the fact that Kylian Mbappe was caught offside many times and a similar number answered that their favourite moment was Marc Casado’s pass for the first goal.
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One might think that the most logical answer to the question of who Barcelona’s best player so far this season has been would be Yamal, given the leadership he has displayed despite being just 17 years of age.
However, Raphinha was by far the most popular answer in our survey. The Brazilian has gone from being one of the players many fans wanted the club to sell to an absolutely vital asset to the team. So much so, that many supporters have written letters of apology to the 27-year-old for having doubted him.
It is therefore not a shock at all that Raphinha is also the player that has surprised fans the most so far this season. Casado comes in at second for this question, with both him and his Brazilian team-mate now established in the club’s first team after initially struggling to hold down a spot.
More than 90 per cent of those surveyed feel it is very important for there to be La Masia youngsters in the club’s first team.
Back at Camp Nou, Peral said to The Athletic: “La Masia is the best filter for the players who make it to the first team. No signing arrives as ready to succeed at Barca as those who come out of La Masia.”
Fans are very confident that Barcelona will win La Liga this season after their strong start. A whopping 91.7 per cent said they believe the club will be top of the pile next May and pick up what would be their 28th Spanish top-flight title.
Perhaps a tougher question relates to the Champions League and how far Barcelona can go in a competition they haven’t won since 2015.
The Catalan club haven’t made the final of Europe’s premier club competition since that triumph and have even featured in the Europa League twice in this period (2021-22 and 2022-23).
So, off the back of a tough few years when it comes to continental football the question on everyone’s lips in Barcelona is: how deep into the Champions League can Flick’s side go in 2024-25?
More than half of those polled (53.8 per cent) believe Barcelona will reach the semi-finals but go no further, while the second-most popular answer, with 21.7 per cent, is that the Catalans can win the competition. Being eliminated at the quarter-final stage is the prediction of 17.3 per cent of respondents and a little more than six per cent of those asked believe the club will lose in the final.
However well Barcelona have performed on the pitch this season, it cannot be denied that they have issues to deal with off it.
Fans were asked if on-field triumphs help them forget the wider issues surrounding the club and the answers were mixed.
A little more than 40 per cent of people said victories somewhat helped, and nearly a third of respondents said they definitely did.
However, more than a quarter of fans said that good moments on the pitch don’t help ease their concerns about the club’s issues.
“Oh, so there are off-field problems?!”, Peral answered sarcastically. The fact he could crack a joke about it suggests that there is much more optimism at the club already in this campaign than there was at any point during the last one.
(Top photo: Ion Alcoba Beitia/Getty Images)
