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Graham Hunter, Spain writer
The rarified atmosphere around Barcelona which encompasses their often myopic, hysterical media, their downtrodden and traumatised fans, plus a directorate which has spent more time baling water out of the craft than sailing forward over the past few seasons means that defeat to Bayern Munich on Wednesday in the Champions League will tip most of them back into full-on crisis mode despite this season’s excellent opening phase.
This, of course, would be a nonsensical position to adopt.
For context, despite playing at home, Barça are are underdogs considering past results. Their all-time record against Germany’s most powerful and relentless club is, quite simply, atrocious. Including the infamous 8-2 defeat that completely wrecked the Quique Setien regime four years ago (at the hands of current Barça coach Hansi Flick, remember!) the Catalans’ slate against Bayern reads: played 15, won 2, drawn 2, lost 11, scored 16, conceded 37.
This is, by a huge distance, their worst and most humiliating record against any rival in Barcelona’s entire 125-year history. Just to seal the case, Barça’s last four matches against the Bavarians have been straight defeats, no goals scored and 11 conceded.
If this run continues on Wednesday, Barcelona would sit with three points from a possible nine and, even with five matches left — Red Star Belgrade away; Brest, home; Borussia Dortmund, away; Benfica, away; Atalanta, home — Flick’s team would be in a precarious position.
After the second matchday, Opta ranked Barcelona as most likely to finish 11th — meaning no automatic qualification to the knockout rounds (only the top eight) and a play-off tie early next year. But they would be seeded, giving them home advantage for the decisive match in that tie. Defeat at home to Bayern and that estimate will change — pretty negatively. They’re currently 16th in the Champions League, courtesy of goals scored, and it’s feasible that defeat would leave them temporarily in the elimination zone.
Any team that finishes 17th to 24th in this new format will play their decisive second leg in the knockout round away from home — a disadvantage and a prospect to strike utter horror into the hearts of Barcelona’s leaders. They literally cannot afford not to make it through to at least the quarterfinal ties — a financial catastrophe.
But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, as there’s a surefire first step Barcelona can take in order to compete for a draw or (unlikely) win over the Bundesliga leaders: Stop making brainless decisions.
Two of their last three Champions League matches have ended in horrible, damaging defeats, in contests they could and should have won, after they had a player sent off each time. Sent off for instinctive, but daft, decisions.
One instance was when Ronald Araújo (with Barcelona leading PSG 4-2 on aggregate in last season’s quarterfinal) brought down Bradley Barcola after he got away from him. The other was when Eric García was fed a misjudged pass by Marc-André ter Stegen, found himself robbed of the ball and pulled Monaco’s Takumi Minamino down almost instinctively. Red card again.
Neither decision was crystal clear and both went against Barcelona, but both, in a number of ways, were entirely unavoidable. If they fall into the same traps against Bayern Munich this week they won’t simply lose — they’ll be humbled.
Flick, if anything, has his new team playing with an even more daring, advanced, high defensive line than home-bred, Cruyff-disciple Xavi Hernandez did. It’s remarkable to watch. Whenever this version of Barcelona feels able to it defends, literally, on the halfway line. The ebb and flow of matches means that their defence’s average distance from their goal-line is 51 metres — a vast, grand canyon of green grass between goalkeeper and his defensive team-mates compared to 99% of other teams. The pitch they’ll play upon against Bayern is 105 metres long, indicating that Flick’s team will try to defend not far short of that halfway line.
It’s a tactic meant to achieve several things. Firstly, it pushes all the action towards the opposition’s ability to build from the back. Meaning that not only does Barcelona’s pressing and harassing start way high up the pitch, but they can accumulate lots of bodies to crowd the zone where their opponent really doesn’t want to lose possession.
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How Hansi Flick has revived Robert Lewandowski at Barcelona
Alejandro Moreno and Steve Nicol discuss Robert Lewandowski’s form after Barcelona’s 5-1 win vs. Sevilla.
It’s a defensive line, which also means that if Barcelona win the ball back when an opposition breakaway dissolves, then the first offensive pass is on or beyond the halfway line — allowing an instant danger of a goal-pass being created for Flick’s side.
Finally, and this is to be borne in mind for the Bayern test, if your rival sees the huge space in behind the defensive line and wants to burst/counter attack into it, then they require to have the calm and accuracy to distribute the ball well and it’s imperative they have attacking players, not necessarily the centre-forward, who can out-sprint Barcelona’s retreating defenders.
In the PSG instance, they did. Barcola profited from bad distribution by Araújo, as Luis Enrique’s plan about how and when to press the Uruguayan (selectively, so they could force him into badly chosen passes) succeeded. Paris played 69 minutes with 11 vs. 10; it was crucial and determined which side went through, as a 4-2 aggregate lead for Barcelona became a PSG 6-4 victory margin. That’s a huge swing — little wonder Ilkay Gündogan criticised Araújo for poor choice-making.
When García got himself red-carded in Monte Carlo for again choosing to commit a last-man foul, the tie was 0-0 and Barcelona went on to comprehensively prove that they could have won with 10 vs. 11 in the ensuing 81 minutes. But they didn’t. They were the better team and had better goal chances — but they were dragged down by playing against a rival with an extra man and, ultimately, were defeated 2-1 by Monaco.
In both instances, the better percentage decision was to let the offensive player get his shot or attack away rather than get sent off.
Modern football, especially in matches both teams want to win (rather than one of them being hell-bent on a draw), with their ebb-and-flow, with the huge investments of athletic energy and with the constant need to avoid tiredness gnawing away at good decision-making and concentration in micro-second moments of difficulty — is a horrendous place to be if you play for a long period of time with a man less than the other team. That’s where Barcelona put themselves twice in the last three outings.
It’s quite another thing when, like Dani Carvajal‘s obvious and fully deliberate red-card foul vs. Germany cost him with an expulsion and a mandatory suspension from the European Championship semifinal — but almost certainly saved Spain from conceding in added time of extra time (125th minute) while leading 2-1.
Flick will know that if Osasuna — where Barcelona lost their only match this season and conceded copious ball-over-the-top chances — can rip his team’s high-defence line to absolute shreds then Bayern, on their day, can demonstrably do so too.
Vincent Kompany and his technical staff will have looked too at how Alaves — even though beaten 3-0 — might have scored three or four themselves from having got behind Barcelona’s defensive line (even though the Basque team was caught offside countless times).
Flick has already confirmed that Barcelona’s goalkeeper Iñaki Peña will play on Wednesday, and he looks shaky — like Bambi on ice, in my opinion. This is a player extremely short on confidence, especially dealing with crosses in a crowded area and positioning himself far out of his penalty area when Barcelona are high up the pitch. He’s required to be the sweeper-keeper.
The deduction is this: Bayern will definitely be able to wriggle free of Barcelona’s high and mid-press so that they can set runners free in behind the high-defence line. At which point Flick’s defenders will be thinking: “I don’t really back Peña to make too many one-v-one saves in this situation.” And they’ll be tempted to commit fouls which, if badly judged, will lead to red-card situations.
They have to ignore that temptation, trust that their teammates can press better as the game goes forward and trust that Peña can produce a performance as good as his work against Osasuna and Alaves was startlingly bad.
If Flick’s men have any chance of beating Bayern, they simply can’t end up with 10 men for the majority of the match. A situation which is far from unlikely.
Stay tuned, this match will teach us a lot about Spain’s league-leaders ahead of El Clásico vs. Real Madrid on Saturday (Stream LIVE: 3 p.m. ET, ESPN+, U.S. only). And about how tough it’s going to be to qualify for Champions League football in the new year.