How Hansi Flick fixed Barcelona and put them firmly in the hunt for three trophies

Hansi Flick turned 60 in February, when his Barcelona team were 13 games unbeaten. He celebrated his birthday by inviting his backroom staff and the club’s sporting director, Deco, to lunch at Ikibana Sarria, a well-known Japanese restaurant in the Spanish city.

It was meant to be a low-key event, but in Barcelona even the walls seem to whisper. As he walked towards the front door, the German bumped into several local reporters and camera crews who, somehow, had found out about the meal. They filmed the arrival of each member of the Barcelona staff.

Flick was in disbelief.

“This should be a private thing, right?” he asked them. 

He has been at Barcelona for 10 months now but the intensity of the media glare on the football club still shocks him. He was told by his entourage before joining that the Barcelona media landscape is “a jungle”, but, for the most part, Flick has dealt with the scrutiny well. 

It’s also why Barca have taken steps to create a more exclusive environment around the first team. The presence of club staff in facilities used by the team has been limited, with the goal of creating a safe and relaxed space for the players and backroom personnel.

An example of this is that members of the media and the club’s own content team are no longer allowed in the dressing room before or after games.

When Barcelona thrashed Real Madrid 4-0 at the Bernabeu in October, there was plenty of content posted online of the celebrations in the dressing room. Fast-forward to March and the thrilling 4-2 win away at Madrid’s other team, Atletico, and there was not a single photo posted of the celebrations on Barcelona’s social media channels.

“There’s an outstanding atmosphere in the dressing room. You can feel there is something special,” Flick said at a recent press conference when asked about what made his Barcelona different to previous clubs he has worked at, such as Bayern Munich and Hoffenheim. 

“The dressing room is unbelievable, everyone takes care of each other. I love to see that. I think we have created a very solid bond not just between the players but between them and all the backroom staff. Everyone feels that they are important in this project.”

The German has been measured in his approach, still conducting every news conference in English while he gets to grips with learning Spanish, and has refrained from pouring fuel on the fire when it comes to the club’s rivalry with Madrid, despite facing questions about it almost every time he speaks to the media. Spain’s big two are battling on three fronts with less than two months of the season to play — in La Liga, the Copa del Rey and the Champions League.

In February, the day after Madrid lost 1-0 against Espanyol to open the door for the latter’s city neighbours Barcelona to narrow the gap at the top of La Liga, reporters asked Flick what he thought of the match and how he’d celebrated the result. “Honestly, I was sleeping,” he said. “The last few days have been stressful, so it was best to go to bed early. I realised this morning that they had lost.”

He has stuck to the football when it comes to managing Barcelona’s first team — and now they are challenging for the treble. And that’s despite experiencing what he described as “s*** November”, as Barca lost four of seven league games between the middle of that month and mid-December. From six points clear at the top of La Liga, somehow they dropped to third, eight points below Madrid.

Three months later, with nine games to play, they are back on top.

Ahead of the run-in, and Wednesday night’s Copa del Rey semi-final second leg away to Atletico (the first leg finished 4-4), our Barcelona reporters had conversations with players, coaches, club staff and people close to the first team, who were speaking anonymously to protect relationships, to find out how Flick got the Catalan giants’ season back on track…

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Tough decisions and sticking to his style

The numbers don’t lie.

Barcelona are the top-scoring team across Europe’s big five domestic leagues and in Lamine Yamal, Robert Lewandowski and Raphinha (78 goals combined) they have arguably the best forward line in the world game. They also have that renowned high defensive line which has unsettled every big team they have faced this season.

But there is more below the surface, too. 

“Flick has found more or less his preferred starting XI, everyone knows it, but since the start of 2025 he’s got more players on board,” a player’s camp source says about the changes in the team. “Those who come from the bench have had their role more defined. They accept it and thrive on it.”

Perhaps to accentuate that, only Atletico have got more La Liga goals from substitutes (18) than Barcelona (17) this season.

Ferran Torres, the backup striker behind Lewandowski, has 15 goals in all competitions — two more than Yamal and his best figures for the club in what is his third full season. Fermin Lopez, who has started 11 of the 31 games he has played, has the same number of goals (five) as Pedri.

Across their La Liga and Champions League matches, Barcelona have had 16 different goalscorers.

Set pieces are another department where Barcelona have clearly improved.

As we can see from the chart below, they are both generating more xG and scoring more goals per 100 set pieces than they were last season. Only three clubs (Villarreal, Athletic Club and Girona) are scoring more regularly from dead-ball situations in La Liga.

Flick made bold tactical decisions after that “s*** November” to fix the team’s problems. The first of them was in goal.

The 34-year-old Wojciech Szczesny had come out of retirement in September to join Barca as a free agent after the long-term injury suffered by their first-choice goalkeeper Marc-Andre ter Stegen. However, the former Arsenal and Juventus player had to wait until January 4 to make his full debut, in a Copa del Rey match against fourth-division side Barbastro.

In the absence of Ter Stegen, Inaki Pena had been Flick’s starting goalkeeper — that is until the Supercopa de Espana semi-final against Athletic Club on January 8. Pena turned up late to a pre-game team meeting and was dropped (there will be more on Flick’s love of punctuality later).

As a punishment, Flick started Szczesny against Athletic Club and he produced such a convincing performance that the coach picked him for the final against Madrid, too. From that point on, Szczesny has been Barcelona’s stand-in No 1.

The decision, and the ruthlessness of it, took many Barca fans by surprise. On paper, there didn’t seem to be many footballing reasons to leave Pena out. The 26-year-old had not made any major mistakes in his games but Flick was convinced that there was room for improvement.

In Szczesny, Flick saw the type of player that he believed the team missed during that bad run at the end of 2024 — an experienced and commanding voice in defence, a highly respected figure in the dressing room and, most importantly, a better shot-stopper than Pena. 

It was not a smooth process. Szczesny was sent off in that Supercopa final and made two major mistakes in a Champions League match at Benfica soon after that cost Barca two goals, but Flick kept faith. 

Using the expected goals on target (xGOT) metric provides a base for Flick’s convictions. This metric helps to quantify the quality of on-target shots, taking into account factors such as shot distance and placement within the goal, to suggest how likely the average goalkeeper is to concede from each attempt on goal.

Since Szczesny signed for the club, across both La Liga and the Champions League, he has over-performed in this regard, conceding 11 goals, when the quality of on-target shots suggests that he should have been beaten almost 13 times. Pena, on the other hand, has allowed almost four goals more than the difficulty of his shots faced would estimate he should, pointing to his struggles for consistency when it comes to keeping the opposition out. 

“Tek (Szczesny) is my No 1,” Flick said in a press conference in February when asked about his goalkeeper selection.

By then, Pena had requested a private meeting with the manager to know the reasons behind Flick’s choice.

According to those close to Pena, the player felt the decision was harsh and unfair. He felt the biggest reason that Flick had to bench him was that he turned up late to that pre-match meeting before the Supercopa semi-final, and that when other players were late to meetings they returned to the starting XI after one game on the bench as punishment. In contrast, Pena has not played a minute of football since January. 

Flick argued his decision went beyond disciplinary issues, and that he honestly believed Szczesny was now a better fit for the team. Pena left that meeting disappointed and assumed it would be tough for him to force his way back into the starting line-up. His future at the club, with his contract expiring after next season, is very unclear.

The second major decision Flick made revolved around Frenkie de Jong.

At the start of 2025, he handed the Dutchman the reins as the team’s holding midfielder, at the expense of fan favourite and academy graduate Marc Casado. As well as Casado had played in the first half of the season, Flick felt De Jong could provide more for Barcelona in possession. Some of the coaching staff felt this aspect was one of the contributing factors to the team’s bad run of results in November and December.

It was another unpopular call, especially given Casado’s performances in big games such as the 4-1 win against Bayern Munich in October, or in both victories over Madrid this season.

He and his staff have been very patient with De Jong. The manager insisted the 27-year-old had the potential to become an important player for the club despite his rocky time since joining Barcelona from Ajax in 2019 but he needed a fully-fit version of the midfielder. One person who has been a big support to the Netherlands international during tough moments this season is assistant manager Heiko Westermann, who joined the club with Flick last summer and had played alongside De Jong for Ajax in 2016-17.

The Athletic reported last week that De Jong wants to stay at Barcelona beyond the end of his current contract, which runs until 2026, and is in talks with the club over a new deal. Flick’s trust in De Jong has paid off and he is producing some of his best displays in a Barcelona shirt. 

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Don’t be late: Flick’s routines and man-management

When Deco and his assistant Bojan Krkic travelled to London in May last year to meet Flick for the first time, they discovered a manager who had conducted an extensive analysis of not just Barcelona’s first-team squad but also the second team, Barcelona Atletic, as well as the best prospects in the under-19s. 

Both were impressed with Flick’s knowledge of what he would be walking into if he succeeded Xavi as manager, a feeling that was shared by first-team players and academy talents months later, when pre-season started under him.

But if there is one thing that has had a direct impact on day-to-day life at Barcelona this season, it is the extra layer of discipline that Flick has introduced.

“This is a matter of respect for Hansi,” says someone close to the manager’s camp. “The biggest characteristic in his rules is punctuality. Every individual needs to show up on time in every meeting. If they fail to do so, they won’t play. The footballers are surrounded by a backroom staff who work a lot to maximise their potential. To respect everyone’s job in the club, it’s fundamental to have this punctuality.”

As well as Pena, who we mentioned previously, another player to fall below Flick’s standards when it comes to time-keeping is defender Jules Kounde.

The France international has been taken out of the starting line-up three times this season (away at Alaves in August, and at home against Espanyol in November and Rayo Vallecano in February) after being late to the pre-match meeting. Each time, Flick has started the 18-year-old Hector Fort at right-back instead. 

Sources in the dressing room say the whole team backs this treatment, and applying it to a player such as Kounde who, on paper, does not have a solid back-up in his position, has strengthened Flick’s position even more.

He has also addressed situations with other key players such as Yamal. When the teenager was taken off in the final minutes of the final Champions League league-phase game against Atalanta in January, a 2-2 home draw, he was visibly frustrated as he wanted to stay on. Flick, far from avoiding the situation, went to Yamal on the touchline to explain why those substitutions are so important in the bigger picture of Barcelona’s season. 

“I like to play all the possible minutes,” Yamal said afterwards. “But the manager came to remind me I had played a good game and that I needed to rest for the league game we have on the weekend, which is very important too.”

Flick has also changed the team’s matchday routines. This season, before every home game, he gets the team to gather at the same city centre hotel, Gran Melia Torre Melina. They arrive there on the team bus from the training ground and spend the day together before being driven to the Montjuic stadium, where they are playing home matches while Camp Nou is being renovated.

He also requested changes to the players’ dress code on matchdays. Last season, they could wear whatever they wanted to arrive at the stadium. “At some point, it looked more like a fashion show than a football game,” joked one source at the club. 

Now they have to wear the club tracksuit, with the aim being to increase their focus on the job at hand: winning a football game. After the final whistle, they can leave the ground wearing what they like.

The approach to away games has changed, too.

Under Flick’s instruction, the team now travel the day before every match on the road, and he has set a three-hour limit — if logistics allow — for any such trips by bus. If it takes longer than three hours, the coaching staff prefer for the team to travel by plane as they believe it aids the players’ recovery.

For a midweek Copa del Rey quarter-final in Valencia in February, Flick did not want his team to travel back to Catalonia by bus as they needed to recover for a key match away to Sevilla three days later. The airport in Valencia did not allow flights beyond midnight, so the team were driven to the one in Castellon, 90km north, to then fly back to Barcelona. 

Players are very pleased with Flick’s style of man-management. “He is an honest man,” a member of the first team squad told The Athletic. “He tells you things how he sees them, you don’t get the feeling that he is messing around or hiding the truth.”

Another source in the dressing room said Flick’s honesty and clarity are what has given the squad the biggest boost this season: “He has a clear idea of what he wants to do and has been very straightforward with players, making them believe they were full of talent. He spoke with multiple players at the start of the season insisting he trusted them, and those were not empty words.”

Prime examples of this are Inigo Martinez and Raphinha. During the recent international break, the Brazil international confessed it was a chat with Flick before the start of pre-season that convinced him to stay at Barcelona. “I considered leaving the club, but Flick told me he would trust me if I stayed and I believed him,” Raphinha said in an interview with the Brazilian outlet Globo. 

Raphinha has gone on to be one of Barcelona’s best players, scoring 13 goals in La Liga and 11 more in 10 Champions League appearances.

Centre-back Martinez’s situation was also up in the air last summer. He was unregistered with the first team before the start of the season, and if the player had asked to leave, Barcelona would have let it happen. But it was another pre-season conversation with Flick, during which the manager told the 33-year-old he would get a fair chance to impress him, that made Martinez want to stay. He is now in the form of his life. 

Another centre-back, Eric Garcia, had plenty of doubts about his future too. Girona were interested in a transfer but Flick had a private chat with Garcia and asked him to stay because of the injury crisis Barcelona were experiencing. Flick recognised he could be a valuable squad member, given his ability to play as both centre-back and holding midfielder.

The 24-year-old did stay, and has played 30 games in all competitions. In January, with Girona and Serie A side Como sniffing around, Flick had another conversation with Garcia and insisted he couldn’t allow him to go as he still had an important role to play. 

The prodigious midfielder Gavi has also been handled carefully. The 20-year-old has returned this season from an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee injury and has struggled to nail down a guaranteed place in the starting line-up — mainly because of the form of the likes of Pedri, Dani Olmo, De Jong and Casado.

“I’m so proud of Gavi, he had a heavy injury but he is always willing to help with anything,” said Flick in a news conference after Barcelona beat Osasuna in La Liga on Thursday. “He’s been great. He is so professional and wants to help all the time, even coming from the bench.”

The players trust Flick, and he needed that during the saga surrounding the registrations of Olmo and Pau Victor in January. It was an unpleasant situation for everyone with the duo’s involvement with the team for the second half of the season in doubt, but Flick stayed calm and was a reassuring figure for his squad.

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Two months left and three trophies to play for

Barcelona are three points clear at the top of La Liga with nine games to go, including a Clasico at home against Madrid in the second weekend of May.

They are also in the Copa del Rey semi-finals, the second leg of which is on Wednesday against Atletico in Madrid, with the tie level at 4-4. And they are in the last eight of the Champions League. The first leg of their quarter-final with Borussia Dortmund is next Wednesday at Montjuic.

This team are thriving and, given the atmosphere around the club, the players are not hiding their hopes of completing a treble this season. 

“We shouldn’t fear anyone,” Yamal told Sport when asked about a possible Champions League final against holders Madrid in Munich at the end of May. “I said that Liverpool were the favourites because they finished first in the league phase and then came us (who came second). I don’t fear any team. We are the side that does the most damage to Madrid, and vice versa.

“If you think you’re not favourites, you’re already starting to lose. Don’t think teams can beat you. Think that you’re the best team, play the best football and have the best chance of winning.”

Raphinha backed that up when speaking to Spanish television station Movistar last month. “If we can win the Champions League? I think we can win everything. We believe we can win every game we face at the moment.”

The players and staff do not take anything for granted but winning the treble is a target in their minds.

The 4-2 win against Atletico in La Liga in March is considered one of the key moments in the season so far, and a point at which they began to believe.

(Additional contributor: Thom Harris)

(Top photo: Judit Cartiel/Getty Images)