Barcelona is full, but still hungry?

Barcelona have had a successful season, although not perfect, but enough to confidently look forward to the new season. The biggest question for Hansi Flick's team is the motivation after success.

Success under Hansi Flick

Barcelona’s biggest success last summer was not the signing of Dani Olmo, the return of Pedri, Gavi or the explosion of Lamine Yamal. The biggest highlight was the arrival of Hansi Flick at Camp Nou. Flick’s arrival laid the foundation for a series of achievements that followed.

Raphinha is living proof of Hansi Flick's cool hand when he arrived at Barcelona. In the 2023/24 season, the Brazilian star scored only 6 goals in La Liga and 3 goals in the Champions League under Xavi. But last season under Flick, the former Leeds star scored 18 goals in La Liga and 13 goals in the Champions League.

Even when playing for Leeds in the Premier League, Rennes in Ligue 1 or the Portuguese clubs before, Raphinha has never scored so prolifically. In all competitions, the 28-year-old star scored 34 goals for Barcelona in the 2024/25 season - while in previous seasons, he never reached the 20-goal mark.

Lamine Yamal also benefited under Flick as he gave the young prodigy a chance to soar. In the 2023/24 season, Yamal scored 7 goals in all competitions. The following season, the young talent scored nearly three times as many goals (18 goals).

This number seems a bit less than Raphinha's but is more impressive because Yamal is being looked after much more closely after exploding at the Euro 2024 finals. Moreover, it is the Spanish talent who creates the space for Raphinha to score.

Flick also helped his former student Robert Lewandowski, who was already good, become even more fearsome when he scored 42 goals last season (including 27 goals in La Liga and 11 goals in the Champions League). This number is also the highest in the seasons that the Polish striker has performed since coming to La Liga.

With a flexible approach and good use of resources, Flick helped Barcelona - financially blocked - become the team with the most attractive playing style last season. Their formidable attack defeated Real Madrid four times during the season, including a 4-0 victory at the Bernabeu.

When necessary, Barcelona play pragmatically with a defense that is difficult to penetrate. This was evident in February when they had to spread their strength across many arenas and the club only conceded one goal in five La Liga matches, two of which were 1-0 wins over Alaves and Vallecano.

In the summer of 2025, Barcelona's financial situation will be more relaxed. Although they have not been able to buy big players except for Joan Garcia (25 million euros from Espanyol), they are still able to attract big stars (on loan Marcus Rashford from MU) and are confident of having enough funds to register them to play, avoiding the situation of running and lining up like last season.

In general, Barcelona's favorable weather, favorable location, and favorable people this year are better than last season. Will this help the club make a breakthrough compared to last season?

In fact, the only thing Barcelona lacked last season was the Champions League. Flick's team came very close to the final but in the final minutes at the San Siro, they let Inter Milan equalise and then turn the tables in extra time. Missing out on the European title was a shame but it motivated Barcelona to try harder this season.

Question about Barcelona's motivation

Motivation. Two simple words but they were the key to Barcelona's success last season. Raphinha's motivation was to prove himself after being considered a bad signing under Xavi, Yamal's motivation was to shine to get a pay rise or Lewandowski's motivation was to score a lot of goals so that the club would sign a new contract...

But now that momentum seems to be lost. After Yamal achieved his goal with a new contract that increased his base salary tenfold to $17 million , the star showed signs of satisfaction. His noisy summer partying and lavish birthday party had people warning Yamal to “tone it down.”

Raphinha also showed signs of complacency when he criticized the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, while a player who is hungry should have set a goal of participating and winning the next tournament. Recently, Raphinha was placed by coach Flick in the starting line-up of Barcelona in all 3 friendly matches of the Asian tour but did not score any goals. This number really raises questions about Raphinha's form and desire because in those 3 matches, Barcelona scored 15 goals. Even rookie Rashford scored but Raphinha did not.

Lewandowski scored 2 goals on the tour but is getting older and facing fierce competition from Ferran Torres (who also scored 2 goals). Barcelona's board seems to prioritize Torres and is no longer interested in keeping the Polish striker. Will that cause Lewandowski to lose his passion in his final months in Spain?

Success comes when you work together to deal with adversity but it is easy to collapse when you are at the top. This truth is what Flick and Lewandowski experienced at Bayern Munich. In the 2019/20 season, Flick helped Bayern win the treble by winning the Bundesliga, the German Cup and the Champions League.

The following season, Flick saw Bayern Munich eliminated in the second round of the German Cup after losing to Holstein Kiel in the second round. In the Champions League, Bayern were eliminated by PSG in the quarter-finals, with two goals from Kylian Mbappe. The shock of being eliminated by PSG on April 13, 2021 made Flick realize something was wrong with Bayern and three days later, he informed the board that he would leave the club at the end of the season.

Whether Barcelona in their second season under Flick will be like Flick's Bayern Munich before is hard to predict. However, Bayern in the 2020/21 season will still win the Bundesliga because there is no worthy opponent in the German league. In La Liga next season and like every other season, Real Madrid will not let Barcelona finish easily. And in the Champions League, PSG, the English teams are not easy opponents.

Source: https://znews.vn/barcelona-no-du-nhung-con-khat-khao-post1574599.html