It has not been that much fun to be a Barcelona fan in recent years.
The drawn-out demise of the great team of a decade ago was difficult to accept, as heroes like Carles Puyol, Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta, Luis Suarez, Gerard Pique and Sergio Busquets grew old and moved on.
Most painful of all was Lionel Messi’s final few years at the Camp Nou, as the best player in Barca history reached a stage where he himself just wanted out.
Meanwhile, off the pitch, huge financial problems mounted under the former president Josep Maria Bartomeu. The current president Joan Laporta’s ‘levers’ policy of borrowing from the future has also run into difficulties. The still not properly explained payments of €7.3million to the former vice-president of the referees’ association, Jose Maria Enriquez Negreira, have also been a huge stain on the club’s reputation.
For many football fans outside of Catalonia, at the Bernabeu and elsewhere, Barca had become a figure of fun. Increasingly humiliating exits from the Champions League knockout stages were followed by two seasons of not even being able to get through their group. The idea of Barca as one of the continent’s top teams seemed past and their return to that table seemed a long way away.
The bright light of the 2022-23 La Liga title victory was immediately followed by a season of angst under the management of Xavi. As the former playmaker struggled last year with the stresses and strains of the job, his nervousness and neuroses seemed to spread throughout the team.
(MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images)
Even last summer did not seem much to get excited about. Barca’s only big signing was Dani Olmo, a star of Spain’s Euro 2024 winning side, but their financial problems were such that they could only register him with La Liga due to an injury to his new team-mate Andreas Christensen.
Replacing Xavi with Hansi Flick was seen as a roll of the dice by the president Laporta, given the German did not speak Spanish (or Catalan), had never worked in La Liga and so many important players were out for a long time — including Ronald Araujo, Frenkie De Jong and Gavi.
Even as Flick’s Barca started the domestic season well, there were plenty of voices within the Blaugrana family who were not convinced. The German’s tweaks to the team’s traditional style of play, making them more direct, with less control of possession, were seen as risky. It was one thing to beat Valladolid, or even Villarreal, in La Liga, but the real tests were still to come.
Such realism, or maybe pessimism, should not be surprising, given how much pain the club’s supporters have experienced in recent seasons.
So everyone had this week circled in their calendars — Barca would play Bayern Munich in the Champions League, and then their historic rival Real Madrid in a Clasico at the Bernabeu.
Both those tests have now been passed in a tremendously entertaining way. The 4-1 victory over Bayern Munich, who so often have punished Barca in European ties, was barely believable for many fans. And now hammering Real Madrid 4-0 in their own stadium, after Madrid won all three Clasicos last term, is another semi-surreal success to celebrate.
De Jong, Lewandowski and Alejandro Balde celebrate one of Barcelona’s goals at the Bernabeu (Photo by Angel Martinez/Getty Images)
Flick’s team rode their luck in plenty of moments in both games. The high pressing approach, which needs a high defensive line to squeeze their opponents, leaves huge open spaces behind which opposition teams can potentially exploit.
Bayern’s Harry Kane had one goal ruled out for a very narrow offside and Madrid’s Kylian Mbappe had two disallowed for similarly tight decisions. All these calls were correct in both games, but had players been positioned a yard either way, those goals would have stood, and the results could have been different.
Yet, it seems unfair to pick at details. The energy and confidence and joy that Flick’s Barca are currently playing with means they appear capable of reacting to any setback and ultimately rolling over any opponent.
It feels like a completely different Barca. Many of the faces are not that familiar to fans who do not follow the club week to week. The sheer youth of the side is phenomenal — six of the starting XI at the Bernabeu on Saturday evening were 22 or younger. That included two tremendously talented 17-year-olds in Lamine Yamal and Pau Cubarsi. Arguably Barca’s man of the match in the Clasico was 21-year-old Marc Casado, who had barely featured for the first team before this season but has been a regular starter under Flick and put in a tremendously committed and assured performance in midfield.
Cubarsi nicks the ball away from Mbappe during the 4-0 win on Saturday (Diego Souto/Getty Images)
The enthusiasm and excitement of so many youngsters, most of them graduates of Barca’s La Masia academy, has been cleverly harnessed by Flick. Their positivity seems to have rubbed off on older players in the squad, including some who had seemed disillusioned with life at Barca until very recently. Both Robert Lewandowski and Raphinha had their problems with Xavi last year, and moments when their form dipped and their futures appeared uncertain. The pair now look completely revitalised — the veteran Poland striker is rolling back the years with his goals and the Brazilian is hitting the form of his life.
The way Flick’s team is playing also seems very new. Many different Barca coaches have talked about ‘modernising’ the team’s traditional ‘tiki-taka’ style of play which brought such success under Pep Guardiola from 2008 to 2012, including former Blaugrana players Luis Enrique and Xavi. Although he remains very respectful in public about the club’s traditions, Flick seems to have made much bigger changes to how they play — it is much faster, much riskier. It’s perhaps more nerve wracking for their fans, and arguably more entertaining for the neutral.
This Barca are also very different from Guardiola’s current Manchester City team, who always look to control games through possession. Flick and his players are embracing the risks they take, particularly with their incredibly high defensive line. Guardiola (and Xavi last year) are always worried about the danger of losing the ball and getting counter attacked. This season’s Barca plays with zero fear.
It means that games involving Barca can end up in a kind of chaos. It happened in La Liga with shoot-out battles against Girona and Villarreal, which Flick’s side won 4-1 and 5-1 but could easily have lost. It has now happened again versus Bayern and Madrid, two sides with the most expensive and experienced strike-forces in world football. Amid all the chaos, and all the fun, it is Flick’s new young team who keep coming out on top.
Raphinha scores in the thrashing of Bayern last week (Alex Caparros – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
Barca have challenges, of course. There is still plenty of chaos off the pitch, too. More money, or more levers, will be needed in January in order to register Olmo for the remainder of the current season. Maintaining the current levels of energy and momentum through a whole campaign may be difficult. Someday all the offside calls will go against Barca’s high defensive line, and they might be on the wrong end of a hammering themselves. Barca may now be favourites to win La Liga, but it still seems a stretch to see them winning the Champions League.
Still, after Saturday’s game, it seemed churlish to look for negatives. Barca supporters have suffered a lot in recent years, and the team and the club have been through some really hard times. Many at the club will enjoy the spotlight turning towards Madrid, with this result meaning that it is Carlo Ancelotti’s side that are the big La Liga club ‘in crisis’ and questioning whether their veteran coach has taken the team as far as he can.
Meanwhile, in Flick, Barca have a coach who seems to know exactly what the team and the club need.
“We’ve just started our journey and we have been doing it well so far,” he said after Saturday’s win. “When I started we said we wanted to create an environment where the players could be at their best. All the players follow the game plan and I’m happy about that. The fans deserved today. The connection between the squad, the club and the fans is unbelievable.”
(Alberto Gardin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
