Hansi Flick took just 79 league matches to reach this milestone, while Johan Cruyff took 300 games to reach the same number.

As for Nijstaad, his club FC Twente rejected Barca’s offer and thus he will not come here.

Álvaro Cortés to Royal Antwerp for 3.5M euros with percentage of a future sale. This was announced on the FCB official site.

Toni Fernández to Venezia for undisclosed fee with percentage of a future sale and a buy-back clause. This was also announced on the FCB official site.

Guille Fernández to Mallorca for 4M euros (per Fotmob, no announcement of this one on the FCB official site).

“After all this time since the final, and after thinking about it a lot, I want to tell everyone that I’m retiring from the national team…

"It was a decision that hurt and still hurts deep inside, but I understand that this is the right moment.

"I swear I always gave everything, not only in these last few years when we won everything, but before that too. I always fought and gave everything for this shirt, to bring you happiness and make you feel proud to be Argentine through football.

"There isn’t much time left, and different chapters are coming to an end. This is one that hurts me a lot. I love, I loved, and I will always love being part of the national team. I gave everything I had, and I don’t have anything more to give.

"Also, there are great young players coming through who deserve to be here.

"Thank you for all the love during these 20 years. I’m going to miss hearing you from the inside. Now I’ll be one of you, always supporting from the outside, in the good times and even more in the bad ones.

"Thank you to my family for always being there and for being with me throughout this beautiful but difficult journey. Thank you to every coach, teammate and director I had the chance to share it with. I take with me unforgettable memories and moments.

"I leave with peace and pride, knowing that together with my teammates we gave you moments we once dreamed of. It was crazy to experience all of this with you. I love you!

"Thank you God for making me Argentine.

"Vamos Argentina!

"I wrote these words on July 21, two days after the final. Today, after what happened with my dad, I’m even more convinced of this decision than before.”

Make no mistake we still have a good squad. The defenders are not that bad. The Cubarsi, Martin and Christensen partnership is working fine for now against small teams in La Liga. Eric Garcia is also serving as a super-utility player. BUT they are injury-prone players. We have options like Espart playing for Cancelo and Kounde. 5-2 against Rayo looks comfortable on paper, but Barcelona seemed repeatedly vulnerable in transition. The 2 goals were avoidable and looked shaky while defending set pieces.

Yeah we are getting away with defensive lapses when Raphinha, Lamine and the absolute masterclass of our attacking line are scoring for fun. You probably cannot get away with them against Europe's elite like Inter, Arsenal, etc.

We spent the summer hearing rumours like Bastoni, Inácio, Lukeba, Laporte, Nijstad and several other defenders. Yet after all that, we still signed nobody at Centre Back. We had big rumours about Flick wanting a left-footed CB.

Worse, we loaned Araújo to Liverpool. He was not great either but we needed a backup for our injury-prone inexperienced players at the backline. A big signing for the backline was needed. After the departure of Inigo Martinez, we have struggled a lot with our high line.

I just hope we sign someone in the Winter TW and solidify our defense. A tall fast defender. Someone who can track back quickly and have a strong build. If we are serious about winning the Champions League this time round, we should sign a good defender. Not just any defender, but someone who fits Flick's system. Too many young guys at the back. Remember even Cubarsi had Laporte in the Spanish NT. The 10m Gabriel Jesus signing must have freed up the purse for spending on a good CB too and if we can go for a good 50-100m signing, we might finally see a solid backline that keeps clean sheets for fun and scores too.

Here are all the reasons, people who know football, aren't surprised that Raphinha is thriving in a central position. I'm not even going to call him a 9, because he's so fluid in his positioning.

1. Raphinha has thrived in a more central position under Xavi and Flick. When Xavi eventually moved him to the left wing, Raphinha started finding spaces in behind from the half spaces. This was the first sign that Raphinha thrives centrally.

2. When Flick arrived, he gave Raphinha the exact same license to drift inside. He went on to score 13 goals in the Champions League in 2024. This is peak CR7 and Messi level numbers.

3. Enrique showed with PSG that you can score a ton of goals w/out a true CF when he moved Dembele inside and relying on Doue, Barcola, and Kvara to cover the wings. Raphinha isn't the same type of player as Dembele at all, but if it's one skill set they share, it's that they're both effective playing in central areas.

Raphinha is thriving in central areas for a few different reasons:

1. He's always been a phenomenal striker of the football. He can score in so many different ways whether it's from inside the box, outside the box, headers, free kicks, penalty kicks, etc. World class 9's typically have this as their main skill, with the exception of free kicks, that's just a special skill.

2. Ever since Xavi moved him to the left and he wasn't used as heavily for ball progression, he really learned how to move off of the ball. Back then, he would more/less stay wide, but slowly started moving into the half space. The goal I always think of was his away goal at PSG where he ran in behind and Pedri fed him a ball over the top.

3. One would have to assume he learned a thing or 2 about CF play from Lewandowski, who is one of the best movers off the ball of all time. His understanding of how to open up space not only for himself, but for his teammates, is 2nd to none. He even made Ferrass look like a world class 9 when they would play together.

4. Because of how many different attacking options we have, I think Raphinha feels very comfortable coming deep (🍆) in the build up, trusting that the space behind him is occupied by any of Lamine, Fermin, Gordon, Adeyemi, Olmo, etc. This is going to confuse the fuck out of defenses.

Anyways, here's the TLDR: no one should be surprised Raphinha is thriving centrally. He's already shown signs he could the past 3 seasons.

Visca Barca!

In the Flick Era, everyone seems to be generational mostly or scrapped if bad. But some players ever since Flick has had the head coach cap has been generational or has made a generational comeback. The obvious answer to the question is Raphina but in my opinion. He is not the only player who has completely turned his career over under Flick. His rebirth is the most visible and impactful. I think a hear me out for me would actually be Eric Garcia. He just went out on loan to Girona and suddenly he returned and under Hansi he became a swiss knife for some reason. You can argue if Pedri is really revamped but I think he was just always class and had to only get the injuries out of the way to be world class again. Same for Fermin i believe he was just young and talent was always there. Who else do you think probably changed the trajectory of their career under Flick forever. Who do you think in future can also make such a comeback ? Or you are atleast hoping for them to make such a comeback? .

FT: Barcelona 5 - 2 Rayo Vallecano

Desktop note: best viewed on old.reddit.

LINE-UPS

Barcelona (4-2-3-1)

Rayo Vallecano (4-2-3-1)

MATCH EVENTS | via ESPN

12' ⚽ Goal! Barcelona 0, Rayo Vallecano 1. Sergio Camello (Rayo Vallecano) left footed shot from the centre of the box to the top left corner. Assisted by Álvaro García.

19' ⚽ Goal! Barcelona 1, Rayo Vallecano 1. Raphinha (Barcelona) left footed shot from the centre of the box to the bottom right corner. Assisted by Xavi Espart.

21' ⚽ Goal! Barcelona 2, Rayo Vallecano 1. Lamine Yamal (Barcelona) left footed shot from the right side of the box to the top right corner. Assisted by Marc Bernal.

32' 🔄 Substitution, Rayo Vallecano. Adrià Pedrosa replaces Jozhua Vertrouwd because of an injury.

51' ⚽ Own Goal by Florian Lejeune, Rayo Vallecano. Barcelona 3, Rayo Vallecano 1.

57' 🔄 Substitution, Rayo Vallecano. Pedro Díaz replaces Gnangoro.

57' 🔄 Substitution, Rayo Vallecano. Fran Pérez replaces Jorge de Frutos.

59' ⚽ Goal! Barcelona 3, Rayo Vallecano 2. Sergio Camello (Rayo Vallecano) header from the centre of the box to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Unai López with a cross following a corner.

64' 🔄 Substitution, Barcelona. Fermín López replaces Dani Olmo.

64' 🔄 Substitution, Barcelona. Rodri replaces Marc Bernal.

71' ⚽ Goal! Barcelona 4, Rayo Vallecano 2. Raphinha (Barcelona) left footed shot from the left side of the box to the bottom right corner. Assisted by Anthony Gordon following a fast break.

75' 🔄 Substitution, Rayo Vallecano. Alemão replaces Sergio Camello.

75' 🔄 Substitution, Rayo Vallecano. Randy Nteka replaces Unai López.

77' 🔄 Substitution, Barcelona. João Cancelo replaces Pedri.

77' 🔄 Substitution, Barcelona. Karim Adeyemi replaces Anthony Gordon.

86' 🔄 Substitution, Barcelona. Hamza Abdelkarim replaces Raphinha.

90' 🟨 Adrià Pedrosa (Rayo Vallecano) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.

90' ⚽ Goal! Barcelona 5, Rayo Vallecano 2. Lamine Yamal (Barcelona) left footed shot from outside the box to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Karim Adeyemi.

MATCH STATS

MATCH ENDED

I believe that Barca is playing their best football under Hansi Flick and in this post I would like to make an analysis of why this is the case and why we should expect this to be our best season under Hansi

The main reason is Raphinha who knows is playing a role of a mobile striker. So while in previosu season we played with an static striker like Lewandowski now we have a mobile striker in Raphinha who doesn't stay in the area but actually moves a lot which makes it much harder for teams to defend because now they don't have a fixed player to defend and this constant movement makes it harder to defend becasue when he moves away from the area someone else comes and takes his pace. This is the weakness you always have when playing a pure striker but with Raphinha you don't have anymore.

Second main reason is Anthony Gordon who is a true winger capable of creating a lot of threat by himself which we didn't have in previous years. In previous year we would rely in Balde to take all the left flank which actually wasn't the best idea because Balde doesn't have good crossing skills or good passes so we ended up not creating anything in the left side with Balde and this meant all of our threat was by Lamine's side which is why we often struggled without Lamine.

The third main reason is Xavi Espart because he makes it so much harder to press us because when you press him he can easily go to the his strong foot unlike a left footed which would feel uncomfortable doing that. In addition to this Xavi is a very intelligent player who knows exactly where zone he should occupy, this is massive advantage for Flick's system because he is often found in free zones where he cause a lot of threat to the opponent's defense and this seems very hard to defend because he always knows where to be thanks to his football IQ.

And the final reason is that our pressing is much better, now we have all our attacking line who are pressing monsters which wasn't the case in 2024/2026 period where due to Lewandowski aging out we only had 2 players pressing the defense while now we have 3 players pressing the defense making our pressing much more effective. This leads to Barca recovering the ball faster and having to defend less time and thus having more time to attack the opponent

And although we haven't seen him yet it's obvious to me that thanks to Rodri's signing we are gonna see the most balanced Barca side yet because not only the possesion is gonna be more fluid with him but he is defensively much better than FDJ who didn't have a clue in how to defend. This is gonna make our counter-pressing much better as well as our shape in defense because Rodri's positoning is leagues above De Jong's. When Rodri is fully adapted to the team and Hansi's tactics our defensive stability is gonna be on a different level to what it was in previous seasons

I recently got into watching football and have watched all of Barça’s games so far this season. My friend has been teaching me some things about the sport, the rules, the players, the positions, and so on, but I’d like to understand the game on a much deeper level and improve my eye for it. I feel like I’m constantly missing a ton of what’s happening with the midfield and defence. Can anyone recommend good analysts I can watch or listen to? Thanks in advance.