It was a victory, you sensed, that might be considered year zero when Barcelona next enjoy a sustained run of success.
“This type of match will never be forgotten,” said Raphinha, Barcelona’s captain and hat-trick hero. It wasn’t simply about winning 4-1 against strong opposition in the Champions League, but about how it was done, who achieved it, and who were defeated.
Throughout the first half in particular, Barcelona used an almost comedically aggressive defensive line, which brought to mind the Netherlands side Johan Cruyff played in 50 years ago, never mind the Barca side he coached 30 years ago.
Barca achieved the win with a total of nine players from La Masia — granted, when including the returning Dani Olmo, the only major summer signing. And it was against Bayern Munich, the club who Pep Guardiola effectively defected to, the club who have such a strong record against Barca, the club who humbled them 8-2 four years ago.
Barcelona only paid them back at a rate of 50 per cent for that loss, but that was enough to produce scenes of genuine jubilation in the stands. This will surely be remembered as their most momentous victory during this temporary stay at the Olympic Stadium on Montjuic.
The challenge of facing Barcelona at the Camp Nou, it was often said, was the famously ‘big pitch’. But that was something of a fallacy; the range of pitch sizes permitted for UEFA competitions is pretty slender and the ‘big pitch’ was primarily an optical illusion. The Camp Nou was so vast, and therefore the camera angle so vertical, that the pitch seemed so much bigger on television. More pertinently, Barcelona toyed with the opposition in terms of geometry, stretching play with the ball, and leaving space in behind without the ball.
The Olympic Stadium gives a different type of illusion. A converted athletics stadium means there’s a yawning gap, around 50 yards, behind the goal and the nearest supporters behind it. And as if to emphasise how removed the supporters are from the action, there are often no outfielders in an entire half of the pitch. Barcelona have long played with a high defensive line, but this season they are taking it to new extremes.
That’s no great surprise considering the identity of their manager. Hansi Flick was in charge of Bayern for that 8-2 win and subsequent European Cup success and the positioning of that side’s defensive line felt revolutionary in this modern era, with the liberal interpretation of the offside law. At times, Flick’s Bayern seemed to be opening themselves up to the simplest of attacks, yet they played with enough cohesion to step up at the right time and to drop off and cover the space.
In a way, what Flick is doing with Barcelona is even braver, with less experienced defenders and Inaki Pena, something of a novice, in goal. But the philosophy remains clear, as summarised by Raphinha. “We knew that the further away from our goal we could be, the better for us,” he explained.
Statistics from the major five European leagues this season show that Barcelona are almost playing a different ball game from everyone else. Not only do they catch the opposition offside far more regularly than any of the other 95 teams, but they are close to the top in terms of through-balls played in behind the opposition. In other words, Barcelona allow space in behind at one end and exploit space in behind at the other.
As if to underline the risk of playing that way, the only side to have played through-balls more than them this season are Bayern.
But Barcelona didn’t compromise, with the defenders pushing so high that at times they were practically on top of the two central midfielders, almost in a 6-0-4 shape…
The game was effectively summarised within the first minute. After 20 seconds, Barcelona’s defensive line stepped up and caught multiple Bayern players offside — they would have been warned about this in their video analysis but still seemed surprised at the level of aggression when they encountered it.
That prompted a Manuel Neuer long ball to no one and a turnover of possession. Then Barcelona attacked quickly, breaking in behind, with Raphinha released.
Demonstrating Bayern’s man-marking, the player closest to Raphinha was central midfielder Joshua Kimmich. The defensive line itself was even further away.
Raphinha went on to become the star man, bagging a hat-trick while wearing the captain’s armband. His second goal featured him cutting inside from wide and finishing and his hat-trick goal was a combination of the previous two.
But it was that opening goa that summarised Raphinha’s role this season most concisely; although sometimes shifted out wide, he’s thrived in a central No 10 role, making runs off Robert Lewandowski and in behind.
“I’ve never had a player like Raphinha because he’s incredibly dynamic with and without the ball,” said Flick. “His speed is fantastic. This kind of player, every single team needs him.”
The timing of his runs, more than anything else, has proved so effective, in part because he starts them from deep. And this was the perfect game for a player with that ability.
Never mind the goals, look at this situation towards the end of the first half, when the play was so compressed with two high defensive lines that Raphinha was both a centre-back…
… and then a centre-forward, within the space of four seconds, because there was only about 25 yards to run between the two positions.
Raphinha is one of only three non-Spaniards who featured, alongside Lewandowski and right-back Jules Kounde. A curious element of Flick’s transformation of Barca is that he doesn’t speak Spanish or Catalan, so conducts training sessions in English — which several members of Barca’s first team admit they don’t fully understand.
Maybe that shows that the language barrier isn’t an issue because Flick and his players have the same natural understanding of football.
This seems a truly gifted La Masia generation. Pau Cubarsi is 17 and outstanding. Holding midfielder Marc Casado, 21, reads the game wonderfully. Fermin Lopez is another 21-year-old and times his runs intelligently. Pedri and the returning Gavi, 21 and 20 respectively, almost feel like the veterans of the side. And, in this form, it’s impossible not to look at Lamine Yamal and think of Lionel Messi, who was not on this level when he was 17.
That inevitably prompts a question about how good Yamal will become and how good this Barcelona will be.
But, for now, who cares? Yamal will inevitably suffer setbacks and so will Barca playing this high-risk football, but this was something to celebrate in itself: a convincing victory with aggressive football from a group of young academy products, and therefore surely the purest Barca win since the days of Guardiola.
