In the end, nobody could figure out how to stop Hansi Flick’s FC Barcelona.
No, Barcelona have not mathematically clinched LaLiga just yet, but that 28th league title is a question of days after Sunday’s Cla klsico victory pushed the Blaugrana’s advantage atop the table to seven points with three rounds to go.
Sunday’s 4-3 victory over Real Madrid clinched a sensational Clásico double in the league, in addition to Barcelona’s two cup final wins at Madrid’s expense this season. In total, Barca have racked up four victories and scored 16 goals against Madrid – results that played no small part in Carlo Ancelotti’s departure for the Brazil job on Monday.
Barca can finish the job Thursday in the Catalan derby against Espanyol – the site of the Blaugrana’s previous title triumph two years ago.
There are several factors as to why Barcelona soon will be celebrating an unexpected title triumph. It’s easy to forget that there were doubts surrounding Flick’s appointment on a two-year contract; the first German to take to the touchline since Udo Lattek in 1981, Flick had taken a year off from football after an indifferent two years leading Die Mannschaft, as Barca struggled mentally and physically during the final year of Xavi Hernandez’s rollercoaster managerial stint.
Flick took over a squad that added Dani Olmo in a €55m transfer, but few could have foreseen how La Masia products, holdovers from the “palancas” insanity of 2022, and even arrivals from the Bartomeu era would reach new levels under the Heidelberg native. Flick has garnered both notoriety and plaudits for his unflinching commitment to a 4-2-3-1 formation, typified by a wildly-risky high line – one that nearly cost his team a place in the Copa del Rey final, and did cost them a berth in the Champions League final in Munich.
But to call this strategy “stubborn” or “impractical” misses the point. Barcelona do not deal in pragmatism; the past two managers who even mildly embraced it, Xavi and Ernesto Valverde, did not complete three seasons at the club, amidst scorn from the around that made its displeasure visible in the pages of SPORT or on the radio waves of RAC1.
Barcelona are not Barcelona without proactivity, idealism, or intensity, qualities that – for one reason or another – had gradually disappeared over the past decade. That Flick has rehabilitated this image in one season could be interpreted as bad news for everyone else.
Consider that at one point in Sunday’s seven-goal thriller at Montjuic, Real Madrid did not leave its half of the pitch for 23 minutes and 53 seconds. Granted, this figure points to Madrid’s season-long inability to control the centre of the park amid the retirement of Toni Kroos. But it also speaks to Barcelona’s resilience, a group of players young enough not to know any better. The Blaugrana did not care about falling two goals behind to two Kylian Mbappé strikes – just like they didn’t care about going 2-0 down to Atletico Madrid in the Copa del Rey semifinals, or when they went 2-0 down to Inter Milan in both legs of the Champions League semis.
“The team’s mentality has improved a lot,” Pedri said post-match.
Pedri and Frenkie de Jong represent Flick’s preferred double pivot, the former playing injury-free, world-class football after three seasons of fitness struggles, the latter taking advantage of injuries to the two Marcs, Bernal then Casado, to look more like the Ivan Rakitic successor for whom Barcelona’s previous regime had splashed all that cash.
But ahead of them are more success stories. Raphinha’s brace against Real Madrid took his goal tally on the season to 18, five more than in his first two seasons in Spain combined; the confidence Flick instilled in Raphinha immediately upon getting the Barcelona job has changed the Brazilian’s career. The coach’s “time sharing” agreement with Robert Lewandowski and Ferran Torres was a gamble that paid off; Torres led the line expertly as Barca won the Copa del Rey, and he provided three first-half assists in the Clasico while 36-year-old Lewandowski continued to recover from injury. It remains to be seen if Lewa adds to his 25 goals in the league, his personal best since arriving in Spain.
Lamine Yamal… Do you know how tough this is for me, as an Atletico supporter? I got an 18-month reprieve from Lionel Messi only for this menace to show up. He is literally the best dribbler in Europe, by quantity and quality; he oozes charisma, he has unshakable confidence, and he has a fear of nothing. Lamine Yamal’s equalising goal on Sunday shows that he is improving as a finisher, too – what is stopping him from being the world’s best player right as he turns 18?
Even with the heroics of Barcelona’s front three, Real Madrid really should have made it 4-4 on 90 minutes, but Castilla call-up Victor Munoz missed from close range, prompting heaps of online abuse from always-empathetic Madridistas. Culers meanwhile believe the match should have ended 5-3 after Fermin Lopez scored a cracking goal a few minutes after Munoz’s miss, but a fresh controversy arose after a “thank God” was heard in the VAR room in the process of disallowing the goal for a Fermin handball. I love this age of conspiracy theories and mass distrust in which we live.
Still, this Clasico had it all – multiple VAR checks, another Mbappe hat trick in one of football’s biggest gamesPau Cubarsi playing nearly an hour through intense pain prompted by a stomach bugGavi absolutely clattering Raul Asencio in the final stages. But when Hernandez Hernandez’s whistle blew for the final time, it served as confirmation that in LaLiga 2024/25, nobody could figure out how to stop Hansi Flick’s FC Barcelona.
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