The complexity of FC Barcelona, its current economic situation and the genetic tendency of its social mass to anticipate drama before it occurs reduced to a minimum the voices that predicted a landing as perfect as the one starring Hansi Flick in the Barça bench. If anything Joan Laporta and his paranormal confidence that things will end up happening as he imagines them, an ability in which the club president has no competitor among the human species.
Three months after his start as Barça’s new coach, Hansi Flick is embraced by the fans as the architect of a new project without a roof, also by the locker room as tutor of the young but powerful dream teen and of course by the board, who rubs their hands and holds the German responsible for the spectacular tactical and physical leap experienced by the squad. Flick, for his part, flees from euphoria, relativizes it, distributes the merits and has chosen a word to define what is happening to his players, the flow which, for those who don’t know, is that moment in life when everything flows naturally. He used the word after beating Madrid and had already done so on other occasions. As if he already knew the harmful effects of furious praise, he prefers to attribute the happiness prevailing in the club to outside causes. But it is not like that. Let’s go in parts.
The coach talks about ‘flow’ to define what happens to his players, downplaying importance
The board celebrates Laporta’s sixth sense by choosing Flick, to whom they attribute great importance to the team’s transformation from one season to the next. There is talk in the box about the German’s professionalism, understood as the improvement towards modernity in two essential aspects: tactics and physical preparation. At the Bernabéu both virtues were evident. The first through offside as a defensive exercise worked on in training (12 offsides were pointed out to Real Madrid, which never had a clear pattern of play during the classic). The second, with the Barça team pushing beyond the 90th minute in search of the fifth goal when the previous Wednesday, Bayern Munich, no less, had already demanded a sustained effort of maximum intensity.
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The board is convinced that this metamorphosis is by no means a coincidence. To the point that titles are being scanned despite the course still being in late October. If they do not end up falling, it will not be, they believe in the club, because the team is not prepared, but because of uncontrollable circumstances. Laporta’s hard core went down to the Bernabéu locker room area at the end of the game in search of Flick. The German seemed happy but without histrionics, as is usual for him.
The board considers that with the German the team has made a great tactical and, above all, physical leap
In the locker room there is talk of physical improvement but less. The shots go elsewhere. The younger players have found in Flick a coach who acts as a tutor without falling into paternalism, and who makes no distinctions with the older ones when it comes to truth, that is, when deciding lineups.
Flick is a coach whose authority is not questioned. “It has packaging,” they define it in the booth. “He has very clear ideas and doesn’t let one pass him by. He is respectful but at the same time strict, for example with schedules. “It conveys very concise concepts and marks red lines for everyone,” says a veteran voice from the locker room. At the Bernabéu, during the break, he did not fill the players with instructions but he did convey to them the idea that victory was possible by changing a couple of tactical details and asking for an increase in intensity that the players adopted in the improvised huddle on the stadium. grass after the break. Flick still uses English but makes himself understood. He is direct, a characteristic that is appreciated because rare are the players who allow themselves to be entangled by rhetoric. “It has made them believe in themselves, because the players are the same,” highlights a locker room regular. The truth is that from one year to the next we can only essentially count the replacement of Gündogan by Dani Olmo.
“It has made them believe in themselves,” says a locker room source; “It exudes authority,” he adds.
In the midst of the post-victory euphoria in the classic, the players asked for three days of celebration, but Flick, affable but not influenced, did not fall into the trap. They trained yesterday as planned and were given two days as scheduled. The German coach, along with his assistants and physical trainers, has a plan and is not going to change it because he wins or loses a game. “He is solid, experienced and credible as a leader and wants to push his players to the limit in every game. He is very clear about where he can go,” they say. For now, the fans, the third leg of the equation, are surrendered at his feet.
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