Barcelona won their most recent La Liga match after the big upset at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday. Even though the culés were able to secure the three points at home, something felt off for them.
This is not something new, in fact, if you've been watching them since early this season, you’ll notice something different in comparison with last year. In the previous campaign, they were capable of pressing as high as they could to steal the ball as quickly as possible to recover possession in the opposition half. This is something that has not been happening this season and I’m sure that this is the main issue that has been stressing Hansi Flick all year long.
Sure, we can discuss various reasons such as the departure of Iñigo Martinez, the multiple injuries of key players since August and the behavior of some of them off the pitch, but what you cannot accept or discuss is the lack of intensity.
Against Chelsea, Barcelona could have played with 22 players and they still would have lost that match. Four days later, they faced Deportivo Alaves and nothing seemed different, even with a team that is fighting relegation. The difference was that Hansi Flick recovered Raphinha and Pedri.
The Brazilian winger played a magnificent first half and you noticed something different coming from the other players too. Raphinha is one of those players that can really motivate his teammates to be better and to press as high as they can during the whole ninety minutes. Sadly, not all the players are as committed as him, or on the same rhythm. For example, Robert Lewandowski’s pressure was nonexistent and that has been another big issue to Flick’s idea recently.
Another example is Ferran Torres, the Spanish striker is capable of scoring the most difficult goal ever, but still miss the easiest goal of his career in the same game. In midfield, Dani Olmo, Marc Casadó and Frenkie De Jong have been inconsistent all season long, although the latter has been a standout in Pedri's absence. Additionally, the bad performances game after game came from the backline, especially Jules Kounde and Ronald Araujo. As a result, you have all these horrible results.
Hansi Flick was very angry after the victory against Alaves and honestly, I don’t blame him. All these things that I mentioned before cause him a lot of stress, because we as fans are seeing them every three or four days, but this man is almost 24/7 with his players, he knows what they can give, but they are just not performing as well as last season.
Xavi said a couple of years ago that his team wasn’t able to make that high pressure and reach that intensity that he wanted during the ninety minutes like they just did in the previous season. The Catalonian said that while he was struggling on his third season as a manager for this team. It seems like there’s a similarity with Xavi’s words with Hansi Flick’s problems on this point of the campaign, but let me be clear, it’s not all Flick’s fault, there are players that are not committed to the needs of the team.
Barcelona face Atletico Madrid in the Camp Nou and Flick will need a solution to try to motivate his players to be as intense as their rivals because we know what the colchoneros can do on the pitch. If the culés are not able to match that intensity and that hunger of the Atleti, they will suffer and probably they will lose the top of the table and that stress and anger of Hansi Flick will keep growing.