Barcelona just had a 3-1 home win over Atletico Madrid in La Liga. This victory helped Blaugrana increase the gap with Atletico to 6 points and temporarily reassured.
After a very difficult start to the new season, according to Hansi Flick, the defending champion has gradually improved his defensive shortcomings.
In the match against Atletico, Barca's attack showed a certain lack of luck. Main striker Robert Lewandowski has missed many opportunities but Raphinha, Dani Olmo and Ferran Torres still scored. Looking down at the defense, although Antoine Griezmann and Thiago Almada missed clear opportunities, it cannot be denied that the home team at Camp Nou had a better defensive performance.
One of the most prominent is Gerard Martin's left-sided centre-back position. This is the position the 23-year-old star has started in the last 3 matches. Martin plays with Pau Cubarsi, with Alejandro Balde (left) and Jules Kounde (right) on the wings.
In the match against Atletico, Martin had 9 clearances, 3 interceptions and 3 successful tackles. Martin was only passed once throughout the match. This is a positive thing as Martin has to mark a very technical player, Julian Alvarez, throughout the match.
Gerard Martin had 81 passes in the match, achieving a success rate of 91%. This shows the need for a left-footed centre-back in Hansi Flick's squad. Martin plays simple football, few touches but is not without breakthrough passing situations.
Martin's move from left-back to left-sided centre-back is considered a success. However, if we look back at the pre-season, no one thought Martin could play in that position. The reason for this is that Flick has run out of players due to many injured players in the squad and left in the 2025 summer transfer window.
Not only that, there are cases where they cannot play for very surprising reasons such as Ronald Araujo. The Uruguayan centre-back has asked the coaching staff for a break for a while, perhaps to calm his mentality after his recent period of playing football. Eric Garcia is not a bad player but he plays mainly as a right-back or a defensive midfielder.
Although he has temporarily found a formula for the defense, Flick still cannot ease his worries. The reason is that in the match against Atletico, on the bench of the Camp Nou team, only Andreas Christensen was the defensive player. The former Chelsea star has not played since September, missing 3 matches due to a bullet injury. In the past 2 months, Christensen's longest playing time in a match was only 29 minutes.
In Christensen's case, the 29-year-old star only has a contract until the summer of 2026 and Barca has shown no signs of wanting to extend. If Christensen leaves next summer without adding to his squad, Flick will only have Kounde, Garcia, Cubarsi, Martin and Balde in hand. These 5 players will have to rotate to play all 4 positions in Barcelona's 4-3-3 system. The coaching staff is considering reusing Kounde as a centre-back and pushing Garcia to the right wing.
Although seeing the shortage of players is clear, with Barca's situation in recent years, recruiting new players is very difficult, especially those with quality. Barca's wages are always above the ceiling set by La Liga.
Seeing such a lack of players in the defense, if looking at the attack, Flick also has a headache when having to urgently find a target to replace Robert Lewandowski in the coming time. The concern about the current defense has temporarily passed, but it is only in the short term, there are still countless difficulties waiting in the immediate future.
