Everybody remembers the first time they had something extraordinary, something that made everything else either make sense or pale in comparison — food, clothing — something that makes the light bulb come on and you say, “Ah, THIS. This is it.”
Flick’s Barcelona right now is, for people with a sense of fun (lacking a better word), that thing. Someone watches for the first time, or comes across some highlights of this year’s team and that light bulb comes on.
My appreciation and respect for online tacticos is real, the ability to make all of that stuff make sense. For me, football is marbles in a bowl, a series of actions and reactions. There are tactics in a broad sense, but what is a tactic for what Lamine Yamal does? “Just go … do … ah, screw it. Nice goal.”
This iteration of Flick’s Barça is superior to the previous two in very clear ways, like a racing driver who suddenly gets a car that works. There was always theory behind the football but the implementation was lacking because the eight-cylinder engine was firing on five or six cylinders.
Flick’s football has also adapted in the face of an extraordinary series of stimuli. Having Pedri, Lamine Yamal, Cubarsi makes a manager adapt to the talent present in those players. But this season, in the wake of a summer transfer window defined by many as a mixed bag as they focus on the single thing that they believe the team absolutely has to have, that very same window allowed the remaining cylinders in the engine to start firing.
Anthony Gordon has brought something to that left wing that even Raphinha didn’t have, in a selfless sense of footballing intelligence. Raphinha wants to attack. He also thinks, like most top-level ballers, that he is always the best option, because duh.
Gordon has pace, dribbling, passing — all the tools, but Gordon also has something that coats his toolbox in gold in that selflessness. He will take a shot if the shot is screaming for him to take it, but his default thinking is, “What does the team need in this moment?” It’s like having Pedri as a winger in many ways.
And then there is Rodri.
For those of us who believed that a DM was more important than a CB in that grand scheme of allowing the back line to play better football, that first half against Valencia is something that is easy to point to. There hasn’t been a sense of order and calm in the hole since the days of Busquets. When he calmly popped over a diagonal ball to switch play, it was the missing thing.
We are so accustomed to seeing Flick’s team attack, and attack in a zone. It’s like people get so focused that they never ask, “What would happen if we just switched play to the other side?” Having a DM who thinks like that automatically completely changes how the team plays because it unlocks the whole pitch for a team that attacks like marbles in a bowl.
Xavi Espart is the surprise package, the player who also activates that left flank, which has been a dead zone for the past two seasons, absent the ability of Cancelo to do a madness. The left flank is now an active, vibrant part of the attack and the overall effect is a kind of “AHA” football that is joyful to watch.
Not since Guardiola’s treble team has a group of Barcelona players been so hungry to score goals, then get the ball back so they can score more goals. The press had holes in players such as Lewandowski and Ferran Torres, so an attack based in the press that starts from the front, can’t start because there is no first layer of the press.
What made the Guardiola team so effective is that from the moment the keeper got the ball there was pressure. Eto’o ran at him, Henry tracked attackers, Xavi looked for the steal, Iniesta nipped at their heels, Messi treated an opponent having the ball as a personal affront. If it got past that group, Busquets was trolling the space in front of the back line, casually strolling over to dispossess an attacker as we watched Rodri do many times against Valencia.
Everybody up front could attack, everybody up front could score. The same is true today, as moving Raphinha central looks to be a very smart move. Flanking him with Gordon and Lamine Yamal means that the ball always has somewhere to go, a pair of willing feet ready to slot it home. Add Fermin Lopez to that mixture and defenders don’t know what to do, who to stop because you can’t stop everyone. Put two defenders on Lamine Yamal and he just feeds Raphinha. Put two on Raphinha and Gordon is running in, or Pedri is slotting diagonals to runners. It’s football that is irrepressible by design, and joyous to watch.
Formation? Sure, when things start. But Fermin Lopez making like Lamine Yamal with a mazy dribble up the center as Gordon and Raphinha interchange and Lamine Yamal pops up whereever he finds space is the kind of football that just makes you happy to watch.
It’s been a while since Barcelona football has been appointment football for aesthetes. Xavi’s teams were dour. Effective but too often joyless. Koeman … the less said about that the better, except for Luuuuk! Luis Enrique’s unleashing of the Messi/Neymar/Suarez trident was fun, but not in the same way mostly because it was a hydra rather than a full monster. Everybody worked to get the ball up front. It garnered a treble and we enjoyed the goals, but it was different. This Flick team is a machine, from flank to flank, front to back, a machine that produces goals.
This group has 17 goals in four matches, or some ridiculous number. And more than the goals are the way the goals are happening, leaving aside whatever that was that Lamine Yamal did against Valencia. The team is producing higher percentage chances through movement and an abundance of potential creators and scorers. Defenses have to move, keepers have to move so shooters have bigger holes to aim for. Goals are easier when the percentages are higher.
The press starts from the front, continues in midfield. A liberated Pedri can now work in his preferred and most effective zone, no longer having to serve as DM, occasional fullback or CB. Passing is off the first touch more and more, as movement becomes the thing rather than players carrying the ball in attack, a feature of the first two Flick seasons. As Cruijff said, the ball moves faster than the man.
This isn’t one of those “this is how football is supposed to be played” things, because there is no single way for the game to be played. But the game is entertainment at its core, and football is supposed to be entertaining. Even when goals aren’t going in there should be thrilling moments, possibilities, things that move you to the edge of your seat in anticipation because the game feels alive, vibrant. Ideally, watching the team you love will be fun, and there is no more fun team in football right now than Flick’s Barcelona, even given what is happening with Aubameyang and Depor.
Opponents are going to start bunkering in, goals will be conceded, Champions League football will be fraught. What we can hope is that the team will continue to play in the same entertaining way. We can also assume this because in past years, even to its detriment, they kept playing aggressive, attacking football, even if it wasn’t always logical. What is different this year is that there is logic to go with the aggression.
Guardiola’s teams made triangles, and that was beautiful to watch the ball pinging around. Flick’s team makes slashes, Jackson Pollock to Guardiola’s Piet Mondrian. The picture is still beautiful, still amazing to look at because great art is great art. Flick’s Barça is making art, and it has been too long since culers had such a museum of wonders to visit, week after week.