Hansi Flick’s transformation of FC Barcelona is definitely the story of the season so far in Europe’s club football. After a rough last season with Xavi that was made even worse by arch rivals from Madrid winning both LaLiga and Champions League, Barcelona enjoyed a solid, strong start to the new season under the German manager. However, the fans didn’t want the hype to blow over the top before facing opponents of the highest level.
Well… the oportunity to do so came in October when they were scheduled to face Bayern Munchen and Real Madrid in a space of just a couple of days. It’s safe to say that they passed the test with flying colours, humiliating their biggest rivals. It was a perfect way to top off a month full of convincing, dominant performances and victories. So, at the end of the month, Barcelona’s balance was as follows.
This string of victories further extended the impression that was quietly whispered around among Barça’s fans: We are back!
Victories as convincing as these do not come as a coincidence, at least not with this consistency and continuity. A lot of it definitely comes down to the work of Hansi Flick and his coaching staff, who changed a lot of thing at Barça’s camp. As we wrote before the season started, “intensity” was the buzzword for Flick once he’d settled in in Barcelona, and it now becomes clear why. Their compactness and their relentless pressing are something that Barça had been needing for a while. They win a lot of balls high up the pitch, immediately after losing them, and they use their press as a kind of a playmaker, or a way to create chances in the final third. All in all, Hansi’s start is what dreams are made of, and this is how it looks statistically:
The players that thrive the most in this system are the front-three players, Raphinha, Lamine Yamal and Robert Lewandowski. The Brazilian winger finally seems to have settled nicely to the club, enjoying his best spell since joining in the summer of 2022. The same could be said for Robert Lewandowski who is banging goals left and right now that he’s reunited with his former Bayern boss. And as for the 17-year-old wonder-boy Lamine Yamal… he just continued where he stopped with Spain during the summer. This is how some of their stats looked like in October, with Raphinha being Barça’s highest-rated player during the past month.
The two toughest challenges were the ones in which Raphinha, wearing the famous captain’s armband in the colors of the Catalan flag excelled the most. We could easily say he beat Bayern on his own, scoring three incredible breakaway goals, becoming the fourth Brazilian to score a Champions League hat-trick with Barcelona. A few days later, he set up Barça’s third goal at the Bernabéu before putting the fourth into the net himself for a historic thrashing of their arch rivals in their home ground. All in all, Raphinha’s October will certainly be one to remember and one that is almost impossible to top. Messiesque numbers.
One of the biggest talking points ahead of Barça’s two toughest tests was Hansi Flick defensive system that relies heavily on deploying an extremely high back line and catching their opponents offside time and time again. It’s a risky approach, but an approach that is really well worked and coordinated and gives its fruits game after game.
Many suggested that playing such a high line against Bayern’s pacey wingers was a suicide mission. They did concede one goal, but time and time again Bayern’s attacks came to a halt after the linesmen lifted their flags. The same argument was made by many ahead of the Real Madrid match as well, highlighting, once again, the pace of Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior. The epilogue? Kylian Mbapé was caught offside a staggering 8 times, setting a new record for most offsides in a single match in his career. In total, Real Madrid players got caught offside 12 times and left the pitch with their tails between their legs after conceding 4 second-half goal against a Barcelona team that currently looks unstoppable.
Their offside strategy is no fluke, it’s repeated game after game and the extend of their reliance and mastery of the offside trap can be reflected in the number of offsides provoked by teams in Europe’s top 5 leagues:
They’ve provoked twice as many offsides as any other team across Europe’s top five leagues! All in all, la vie en rose shows no signs of slowing down or stopping for Hansi Flick, FC Barcelona and their fans, and their perfect form in October might just be a sign of things to follow this season. Europe is very much on alert!