Hansi Flick is a coach who knows very well how to score against Barça, sitting as he was on the Bayern bench in August 2020, when the Blaugrana conceded 2-8 in the Champions League quarter-finals. That scoreline symbolised the end of the Messi era at Barcelona. The club has not stopped going round in circles since then, disoriented by a nostalgia that has devoured such Barcelona coaches as Koeman – Copa winner – and Xavi – League winner -, neither of whom Laporta likes since he returned to the box in 2021.
The president met with Koeman and then did not know what to do with Xavi. It is not that he was exactly alien to the past, but he wanted a coach of his own and to a certain extent novel, like Rijkaard in 2003, preferably German, until he found Flick. The question now is whether Flick will also know how to win with Barça.
The German is seen as crucial for Laporta to be able to reach the new Camp Nou in peace after the ordeal at Montjuïc. Flick inspires more respect than admiration for now and his CV is as short as it is brilliant due to the sextuple he achieved with Bayern, better as a coach than as Germany national team coach. It is also known that his agent answers to the name of Pini Zahavi, the same as Lewandowski, the player who had distanced himself from Xavi. One more detail to underline that this is a gamble by Laporta.
Flick symbolises a method more than a name, far removed from personalisms and free from the Barça DNA, after specifying that he is a scholar of Cruyff, an admirer of Guardiola and that he is not far from the Barça style. A way of saying that he is aware of the Barça symbolic load rather than boasting of being one of its bearers, more willing to want to know than to tell, very professional and respectful, also aware that his German predecessors at the Camp Nou were Weisweiler and Lattek.
Empathy is not at odds with the demands of a club that has long lived off a formula that was applied lip service and not from a way of understanding the game that demands dedication and a better explanation than that of tiki-taka, used as a joke and which has nothing to do with the manual of the Barça methodology department. Barcelona has sanctified so many expressions from its theoretical corpus – “running is for cowards” or “go out and enjoy” – that it often forgot to train, to activate the desire to win instead of resorting to excuses or looking for someone to blame, the culture of effort, of “pencar” – of working hard, as Guardiola recalled.
A ritual that Flick has begun to put into practice in silence, in a reserved and even bland way if one looks at his presentation at the grandiloquent Auditorium 1899. Although it is not known if he will win, there is the certainty for now that he is a coach – it is not known if good or bad – who trains and not a messiah or a culé who comes to the rescue of the team and the club in an act of patriotism, faith and service; all news in Barcelona.
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