Hansi Flick: Have we done him an injustice?

Not only does it look special the way Barcelona play, it also feels special on the pitch. “It’s incredible to have those balls to put the defensive line that high.” His player Marc Casadó, 21, said something jovial about it Hansi Flick said the new coach of FC Barcelona.

About Flick and his football Many people in Spain are currently amazed. He attacks, the defense moves out, the strikers go forward, his style is radically offensive – and he is successful. Most recently he won big against two of the world’s best teams.

Flick sometimes seems to be unable to believe it himself when another goal is scored, you can see it in his reactions. First his team ran over him FC Bayern 4:1. Four days later they won 4-0 against Real Madrid at the Bernabéu. This irritated their coach Carlo Ancelotti so much that the cool Italian got into a fight with Flick’s assistant coach Marcus Sorg. And out of frustration, Real Madrid subsequently boycotted the gala awarding the Ballon d’Or.

Real are Spanish champions and Champions League winners. And against Bayern Barça always lost for years, even 2:8 in August 2020. At that time the Bayern coach was called: Hansi Flick.

Less than a year later, Bayern fired Flick, and two years later, after the unfortunate World Cup in Qatar, he did too DFB. Flick was also ridiculed because he wanted to motivate his players with an analogy from the animal world. “Let’s learn from the geese and take the big flight,” he said in the cabin, as an Amazon documentary captured. The players looked down before being thrown out of the tournament.

Now Flick is celebrating spectacular victories and is being compared to Pep Guardiola and Johan Cruyff. “Flick has restored Barça’s greatness,” writes the Spanish newspaper As. “Flick turned a footballing dead man into a courageous team,” reads the report Mark.

So was it stupid of Bayern and the DFB to chase such a coach away? And then not to be repeated when the coaching position in Munich became vacant this spring and Max Eberl decided on Vincent Kompany, who now lost 1:4 to Flick? Many fans are now asking: Did Germany wrong Flick?

If you look at his two previous positions as head coach, you’ll see that things aren’t that different. After Flick replaced his boss Niko Kovač in Munich in November 2019, there was a good weather phase that ended with the triple a few months later.

German champions with a clean sheet record

In the Champions League, Flick’s Bayern took advantage of the opportunity that the Corona season offered them. The clubs from England and Spain were out of rhythm, the knockout phase was played without a second leg and within a week. In the empty stadium in Lisbon, a 55-year-old with almost no head coaching experience became the Champions League winner.

However, less than a year later it was over in Munich. It wasn’t just because of the results. Flick became German champion. But it wasn’t lost on Hasan Salihamidžić that although Bayern scored more goals than under any other coach before – an average of three per game in the Bundesliga – they also conceded 44 goals in the 2020/21 season. You have to rummage through the annals until the early 1990s until you find a master with worse values. Clubs with fewer goals conceded have even been relegated. In the Champions League, Flick lost 3-2 at home to PSG.

Flick immediately moved to the national team, where he replaced Jogi Löw, whom he had assisted in winning the 2014 World Cup. Here the curve was similar. Flick set a starting record. He won the first eight games and his team scored 33 goals. In June 2022, Germany scored five goals against the defensive artists from Italy.

He remained unbeaten for more than a year, a total of thirteen games. Then the fall came. Flick was eliminated from the preliminary round of the World Cup in Qatar. His decision to replace the best player, İlkay Gündoğan, in the game against Japan will forever be remembered. Then balance and play were lost.