Are Barcelona back for real?

I think they might be

Hi everyone, Grace here. I’m really sorry the newsletter didn’t come out last week. I’ve been taking some ADHD medication for the first time, and things went very badly when I upped my dose, along with chaos as I moved in the exact same period. It shouldn’t have happened, but things just got on top of me along with a nasty anxiety spike, so I’m sorry.

I know a lot of you live in the US, and there was some very, very bad news coming out of there. I can’t really offer you any more than this newsletter, but I hope it at least brightens your day a little bit in between hearing about the nightmare.

Data is from FBRef unless stated otherwise.

Picture the scene.

It’s an autumn evening and Barcelona are playing Real Madrid. Real have some of the biggest names in world football but get so easily taken apart by a Barça side full of players produced by the academy. The glint in everyone’s eye is an absurdly talented left-footed right winger doing things at such a young age to defy logic. This is the dream of a club whose identity runs all the way through La Masia and up to the first team. This is Barcelona.

And it feels like it’s happening again.

I don’t think expectations were very high when Hansi Flick took over Barcelona in the summer. The club just went through a cycle where Xavi Hernández was supposed to reignite the old ways and build a new side built on Cruyffian principles post-Lionel Messi. Xavi won one league title in three years and I don’t think his time was a failure, especially when the club made some mistakes in the transfer market. But he wasn’t hired to win a league title. He was hired to coach this team to make it look like Barcelona again, blending bigger names with academy talent, just as Guardiola did for the team Xavi played in. But while he might have been one of the greatest ever practitioners of positional play, Xavi never quite seemed like he could coach it. His team played some decent stuff at times, but they didn’t feel like they were more than the sum of their parts.

If Xavi lived up to all the ideals of Barcelona in theory, Flick seemed all wrong. Barça like to hire insiders. Of the ten men to manage Barcelona (before Flick) in the last 20 years, seven had previously played for or coached at the club. Of the other three, Frank Rijkaard was very familiar with Cruyffian principles from his time at Ajax, Tata Martino was personally friends with Messi, and Quique Setién at least had a long career working in Spanish football. Flick has none of those things. He doesn’t even speak Spanish or Catalan. To find the last complete outsider on this scale managing the club, you’d have to go back to Bobby Robson in 1996/97.

It would’ve been reasonable to think that someone like Flick, a good manager but one with no hand in the club’s traditions, would coach Barça like any other club. He’d be conscious that he needs to get results straight away, especially going up against a Real Madrid team that just added Kylian Mbappé. So he’d play pragmatic football and lean on experienced players, putting results before principles. We’ve definitely seen the results, but the principles have been right there. It’s brilliant to watch.

Barça are nine points clear at the top of La Liga, though they’ve played a game more than Real Madrid. Their xG difference is miles ahead of the rest in Spain, driven by a supercharged attack. They press more aggressively than any other team, play more short passes, and dominate possession to a greater extent than anyone else. They’re not quite perfect at the back, but that can be forgiven when they look so good going forward. This is the Barcelona we’ve all wanted to see.

The defence hasn’t been perfect, perhaps because these players aren’t too familiar with each other. Marc-André ter Stegen in goal suffered a bad injury in September, forcing Iñaki Peña to step in. I don’t think Peña has been terrible or anything, conceding six times in the league from a post-shot xG of 5.6. But when other things are changing, familiarity in goal would be nice, and Barça have been unlucky there.

Iñigo Martínez (33) and Pau Cubarsí (17) have been playing together at centre back, averaging out to a prime age pairing. Cubarsí has looked shockingly confident and comfortable for his age, but I do think he will need a rest at some point. You can’t assume a 17 year old will keep playing like this throughout a full season. Fortunately, Ronald Araújo should be back from injury sooner or later, and that will give Barça room to rotate. Jules Koundé could also shift inside at some point, though he looks pretty settled at right back now. Alejandro Balde feels like old news at age 21, but he’s also a while from reaching maturity. These players should all improve with more time together working with Flick, and they’re starting out pretty well.

Can Marc Casado be the sitting midfielder this team wants and needs? I doubt anyone expected that a year ago. He might sum up the core irony that Flick has trusted these young La Masia players more than Xavi could. You expect a talented 21 year old defensive midfielder coming into a team to work hard with and without the ball and do things that can keep things ticking along. You don’t necessarily expect the progressive passing that Casado has offered this team. Flick has made the job easier at times by using more of a double-pivot structure, though it can be flexible. That might not be the purest form of Barça football, but it makes sense with these players.

Pedri has been playing quite a bit in midfield, which might mean it’s time for a word of caution. It’s no secret he’s suffered injury problems since emerging as a teenager. It’s not a straightforward causation, but I don’t think Barça or Spain did him any favours with the amount of football he played at a young age. Gavi, who also played a lot of football at a young age, hasn’t started a game yet this season through fitness concerns at a ripe old age of 20. It’s slightly different because he suffered a very bad collision injury, but Ansu Fati is another who looked so bright as a very young player before stalling out to fitness problems. At this point in time, Barça have a bad track record of overplaying youngsters and causing problems down the line. Flick has to be the grown up here. The experienced players need to come in at times and ease the burden on younger bodies. Andrés Iniesta didn’t play more than half the available league minutes until the season he turned 23. Please don’t run these players into the ground.

Yes, that means Lamine Yamal. We all know he’s spectacular. He’s doing things I didn’t think were possible at his age, and he’s already an essential attacker for Barcelona and Spain. But therein lies the problem. He’s playing almost every game, and completing 90 minutes in most of them. He’s also going to play every match for Spain, which isn’t in Barça’s control, but it’s still mileage. Calm heads have to prevail at some point. If Barcelona have one hand on the league title in February, I don’t see any reason why Yamal should be playing too much down the stretch. The kid is going to need a rest at some point.

Raphinha on the other flank has been pretty much terrific. Kim McCauley over at The Transfer Flow wrote some great words about him a couple of weeks ago:

“Raphinha currently leads La Liga with 0.8 xG + xA per 90 among wingers and attacking midfielders who have played 300+ minutes this season. Second place is quite a ways behind — Williot Swedberg of Celta Vigo, with 0.52. Vinicius Jr. of Real Madrid has 0.48. Raphinha is also leading the way in StatsBomb’s OBV metric.

[…]

His shot locations are great, but I’m loving the shot types, created by both his runs off the ball and the style of play that manager Hansi Flick has implemented. Robert Lewandowski is doing a ton of dropping off the front line, and center backs are usually stepping up to keep him from getting too much space, because he’s Robert Lewandowski. This opens up a lot of space behind him to run into, and Raphinha is the man doing that running.”

I always personally liked Raphinha more than most Barcelona fans I spoke to, but he’s just been superb this season, with and without the ball. Flick has kept a lot of core principles, but he has added more counter-attacking threat to this team that’s been really entertaining. Raphinha has been a key part of that as a really dynamic modern winger.

Robert Lewandowski, at the age of 36, has been scoring a lot of goals. Strip out penalties and he’s still scoring every 82 minutes in La Liga this season, only a touch over his xG. He’s taking a whole extra shot per 90 compared to last season while having a career-high xG per shot. His average opportunity has a 25% chance of going in the goal, which is completely insane, and he’s doing that four times a match. I’d have to think that xG per shot is unsustainable because it’s so far ahead of the rest of his career, but it’s something to behold. He’s not even receiving more progressive passes than last season, or touching the ball more often in the box. He and Barça have just been off the charts good in creating good chances for him that end up in the back of the net. I have no idea how long he can keep this up at his age, but it’s a reality right now.

In the long run, perhaps Vitor Roque can step up as the Lewandowski replacement, but I think that would be a pleasant surprise, not a likely event. It’s a hole they’re going to need to fill some time soon. But otherwise, somehow, this squad is in really good shape. They have the second youngest average age in La Liga (weighted by minutes played). Martínez is the only other regular starter this season over 30, and he could be phased out pretty naturally. I’m not sure the strategy here was great. I think Xavi wasn’t the magic bullet they expected, and too much money was spent on veterans who weren’t hugely better than the academy talents. But god, those academy talents. They’ve bailed the club out. This is a really serious team now and it has the club’s local identity running through it’s core. I didn’t think it could happen again. I’ve been a sceptic the entire time. But Barcelona might be back. This might be the real deal.