Barcelona just finished the 4th round of the Champions League qualifying round with a score of 3-3 against Club Brugge. This is a match where they would have lost away from home if the home team had not had an own goal and before that was a masterpiece by Lamine Yamal.
In the post-match press conference, Barca captain Hansi Flick was overwhelmed when reporters kept asking him if the German coach was concerned about the current poor defense. It was a very normal question but it seemed to have touched Flick's discomfort.
Not from this season, the problem of the defense's weakness has appeared since last season. Only at that time did Barca's attack be very strong, with all the elements of starting, so they won the domestic treble and almost reached the Champions League final. This season, when Lewandowski was injured, Raphinha was also injured and Yamal was involved in many off-field scandals, the results immediately went very badly.
Currently, when they have the ball, Barcelona is still quite scary, but when they don't have the ball, their squad looks very messy, especially in defense. Barca drew with Club Brugge in a 3 times lead. The teams have only gone through half of the matches in the qualifying round. If they still want to keep their goal of reaching the final, Barcelona must improve immediately if they do not want to fall in the play-off round.
After the match, center back Eric Garcia frankly admitted to the current defense. He said the opponent only needed 2 passes when counter-attacking because the ball was in Barcelona's penalty area. However, Garcia does not necessarily believe that this situation is due to defense. He shared that his teammates also lost the ball in the danger zone many times, directly creating great pressure on the defensive system.
That's right, against Club Brugge, Barcelona lost the ball a lot in midfield. In the situation where Carlos Forb scored from the home team, Alejandro Balde and Eric Garcia tried to push up to break the offside trap but Ronald Araujo and Jules Kounde did not coordinate well.
This is an issue Hansi Flick needs to improve because his team can only defend well if all 11 players are synchronous and play in a rhythmic manner. If they cannot maintain the pressure synchronously, Barca will have a hard time both in attack and defense.
It is true that Barca had 3 away goals against Club Brugge, partly proving that the attack is still stable. However, the final result they received was just a draw. If they need to win, they can score 4-5 goals, which is not always the case.
Lamine Yamal is gradually returning to its original form. The match against Club Brugge was the 18-year-old star's best performance since the beginning of the season, especially after breaking up with girlfriend Nicki Nicole. Yamal scored a superb goal when dribbling past 5 Brugge players. In addition, he had 8 dangerous crosses but no teammates could pick them up and handle them.
Barca are stuck and are pushing the ball into Yamal to find creativity. On a day with good form, Yamal can do everything and vice versa. If this star is locked down, Barca will no longer have anyone who can really make a breakthrough. This further proves that the entire system has to play in the same rhythm as last season, so that new weaknesses are not exposed too much.
Last year, Barcelona also had a bad record at this stage and Hansi Flick called it a " disaster 11". This season is the same, when everything is out of control, it is unclear how the German strategist will handle it?
