Hansi Flick’s Barcelona enter 2025–26 with grand expectations, having claimed three domestic trophies during the German’s first season at the helm.
Flick succeeded a chaotic end to Xavi’s tenure in Catalonia, with the club’s Year 1 demands tempered by the tumult of the previous year, as well as Real Madrid’s splurge to finally acquire Kylian Mbappé.
Few would’ve projected what Barça eventually achieved in Flick’s debut campaign, as they strolled beyond the galacticos in the capital to claim La Liga, Copa del Rey and Supercopa successes. The Blaugrana were just moments away from their first Champions League final appearance in a decade, too.
On the surface, Barça’s 2025–26 season got off to the perfect start. Mallorca are a tough out under Jagoba Arrasate, yet Flick’s men continued from where they left off in 2024–25, easing to a 3–0 victory away from home. Two early goals set the tone, and two Mallorca red cards allowed them to coast before Lamine Yamal curled home a third late on.
Instead of satisfying their manager, Barcelona’s display on Saturday evening left Flick fuming, with reports suggesting he gave his squad the ’hairdryer treatment’ in the dressing room post-match. But why was the German so angry?
Complacency
This is the crux of it.
Goals from Raphinha and Ferran Torres, which wasn’t without controversy, meant Barcelona’s campaign got off to the perfect start, and there was no hope for the hosts to get back into the contest when they received two red cards before half-time.
However, there was no running up of the score from the visitors after the restart, who didn’t net a third until the 93rd minute. Flick wasn’t exactly annoyed at the lack of goals, but with what he perceived, according to SPORT, as a “lack of intensity and pressure.” Understat tallied their expected goals from the contest at just over 2.0 expected goals, while FotMob didn’t record a single big chance created after Raphinha’s early strike.
The German’s system is incredibly high-risk, and predicated on extreme intensity all over the pitch to ensure their aggressive defensive line isn’t relentlessly exploited. With the ball, this Barcelona team are noticeably more vertical and direct compared to previous iterations.
“I didn’t like the match,” Flick told reporters before his dressing room outburst. “These are three important points, but after going 2-0 up, and with the two red cards, I think my team played at 50%.
“That can’t happen. I need to talk to the players about this. You can’t play at 50% against nine players, that’s not what I expect.”
The complacent tempo at which they played the second half on Saturday threatens bad habits to creep into an all-or-nothing game model. Flick is convinced that the La Liga title race will be won or lost during the first half of the season, and he supposedly told his players that they won’t regain their crown playing at the level they did on the opening weekend.
Overall, the German is concerned that, off the back of such a successful season, that his team may already be getting too big for their boots.
Frustrations From Summer
While Flick may have been frustrated with Barcelona’s second-half display on Saturday, the German currently isn’t thrilled with the club’s hierarchy, and was perhaps letting off some steam after a tiresome summer.
Of course, there’s the registration issue, which Flick couldn’t believe took so long to resolve. The manager said he was “not happy” ahead of Saturday’s game, with loanee Marcus Rashford and new goalkeeper Joan García then not registered for the upcoming season.
By hook or by crook, the club got the job done in time. Both made their competitive debuts against Mallorca.
Flick has done superbly well to avoid the seemingly inescapable ’entorno’ during his time at the club so far, but there’s a sense that incompetence from up above is starting to grate on him. It’s also been reported that the Barça boss wasn’t particularly enthused with how their summer tour to the Far East was set up.
Is the German getting sucked into the Catalonian whirlwind, or is he merely conscious of how his reign as Bayern Munich manager panned out after a trophy-laden first season?
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Hansi Flick’s Dressing Room Fury Revealed: Why Was the Barcelona Manager So Angry?.