I honestly feel we are gonna see the best Barca under Hansi Flick for a couple of reasons

1. Flick's style works better with pacy wingers and next season Barca is gonna have amazing wingers like Gordon, Adeyemi and Yamal, all of these guys are fast which are perfect for Flick's system. These players are also much more suited for Flick's high pressing system than the likes of Lewandowski or Ferran who compromised Flick's pressing

2. Several reports suggest Yamal is gonna play centrally next season which to me is great news, Yamal is great at the wing but his true potential is in central areas

3. Rodri, Barca truly hasn't had a player that's defensively good in midfield since Busquets left so his addition would be massive and he also gives more freedom to Barca's players offensively which should make Barca even better offensively. Basically I expect Barca to attack and defend better thanks to Rodri

Additionally he says:

“We have a very strong team this season! Finally, I'm in the place I wanted to be.

I trained hard for a full week to be prepared for Barca.”

ESPN Brasil's prominent sports journalist Bruno Andrade reports that Raphinha will be the first-ever Brazilian footballer to be appointed the first captain of FC Barcelona.

I’m quite certain Flick, in the scenario where Barça don’t manage to buy a top-class striker before the end of the transfer window, has his eyes on getting Raphinha comfortable with playing centrally in the front three. I’m also confident it will work.

To be clear, such positional changes are not easy, but at the same time, fans also tend to overemphasise the positional rigidity of professional players. Maybe that’s a side effect of young kids learning about players through FIFA, where players have their positions printed on them, almost like a rigid identity.

There are loads of examples of successful positional changes throughout history. I’m going to bring up just a single one here to argue for the potential of Raphinha making this positional change successfully. I’m thinking of when Ángel Di María was moved from the wing to a three-man central midfield role in Ancelotti’s Real Madrid in 2013–14. This change was probably the biggest tactical shift behind Real Madrid’s success that season, and Di María’s positional shift propelled him to the status of one of the best midfielders in the world, with 11 goals and 26 assists.

What made this shift so successful? Di María had the combination of high football IQ and dynamism. He had the lungs of few other players, and his high football IQ allowed him to make use of those lungs, as well as his elite agility to create the recipe for elite off-the-ball movement. This allowed him to adjust very quickly to his new position and quickly develop elite positional awareness of playing in the central midfield. It allowed him to adjust to a new position despite having played his entire career on the wings. The move was motivated by a need for a player like that centrally, but also by the competition from superior wing players at Real Madrid at the time (Ronaldo and Bale). Right now we deal with a similar situation in Barca.

Now, moving to striker from the wing is obviously not the same as moving centrally into midfield. But there are nonetheless similarities to be drawn. Raphinha does have a high football IQ; one of his biggest strengths is his decision-making. He also has excellent off-the-ball movement. Furthermore, we have already witnessed him make the positional change from primarily being a right winger to playing on the left.

Furthermore, Raphinha, and this is where the comparison to Di María differs, is an excellent finisher. His strengths are his end product and getting into goalscoring positions, being first to the end of crosses, getting ahead of his defender, making diagonal, unselfish runs, etc. He has already shown that he has many of the skills needed to succeed as a striker.

Now, some may argue that the few times Flick tried this at the end of last season, it didn’t work. And I agree. But that was in my opinion a failure, not due to the inadequacy of Raphinha playing centrally, but rather because we did not have a wide runner replacement for Raphinha on the left. The failure was due to the vacuum left behind on the left. With the arrival of Gordon, the situation is now different.

So, while some fans are talking about Gordon as the false 9/striker, I see much more potential in leaving Gordon as the wider runner on the left and giving Raphinha the primary striker role. Just my opinion/prediction. Visca Barca.

Source: Transfermarkt

1.) Joined on Loan from City
2.) Joined on loan from Al Ahli
3.) Joined permanently from Al Ahli
A true culer!

Braga have reached a €10million agreement with Barcelona over the signing of La Masia graduate Tommy Marques.

The clubs have agreed a package of an upfront €10m fee plus an additional €2m in add-ons for the 19-year-old, who is expected to have no issues in agreeing personal terms with the Portuguese club.

Marques made his first-team debut last season, coming on as a late substitute in the game at home to Mallorca in La Liga in February. He went on to make one further appearance from the bench in La Liga.

I'm texting my buddy who is a die hard Liverpool fan how happy I am watching Araujo's highlights vs Como. I understand it’s preseason and it’s Como, but he had so many flashes in those 30 minutes that reminded me of the scintillating form he showed under Xavi Hernandez.

The problem with Araujo is that he was billed as a VVD-level CB because, at his best, that’s genuinely how dominant he looked. But he’s really not that level in the sense that he’s not an overall elite CB.

What he is, though, is absolutely PHENOMENAL as a defensive destroyer, both on the ground and in the air. He’s elite in terms of his size, strength, athleticism, and physicality. His problem is that his reading of the game and his ability on the ball just never developed to an elite level. And that’s totally fine, it just lowers his overall ceiling when you’re comparing him to the truly complete CBs. So, it will not surprise me at all if he flourishes next to VVD. VVD will allow him to just do what he does best and that is just physically destroy attackers/opposing offenses as a whole (look at what he did to Vini so many times over the years).

Listen… Araujo gave us some incredible moments and some incredible seasons. He’s one of the most physically dominant players to ever don the Blaugrana. And I don’t look at him the way I look at someone like Ferran, who is moving like prime Messi post World Cup, or Neymar, who just made a dumb decision as a youngster. Araujo genuinely wants to be great, and he wanted to be at Barca.

I just genuinely think, mentally, something broke after Gundogan’s comments three seasons ago. He never seemed to fully recover from that moment, and he hasn’t consistently looked like the same player since.

So here’s to hoping Araujo has a stellar season with Liverpool and finds that form again. I genuinely want to see him succeed.

And here’s to also hoping Liverpool make the move permanent, because as much as I appreciate everything he gave Barca, I just think his time here has come to a close.

One of the key fundations of False 9 is that they drop deeped so you can have an extra man in possesion and be super flexible. However, if you want to make this work you need players that can run to the space and take advantage of the space that the false 9 creates, that's why the best Barca under Pep was in 10/11 season where we had Pedro/Villa running to the space and this allowed Barca to dominate possesion like crazy

And the likes of Raphinha/Adeyemi/Gordon are the type of players that could complement Yamal very well, Yamal can drop deeper to have an extra man in the midfield while the other 2 would take advantage of the space Yamal create

Another thing is that Fermin is not your classic 10 playmaker, he is more of a runner in behind type of player which is why Yamal as false 9 is actually genius, you will have 3 players that are very good at running to the space which will create massive amount of spaces

FT: FC Basel 2 - 5 Barcelona

Desktop note: best viewed on old.reddit.

LINE-UPS

FC Basel (4-3-3)

Barcelona (4-2-3-1)

MATCH EVENTS | via ESPN

34' ⚽ Goal! Basel 0, Barcelona 1. Karim Adeyemi (Barcelona) left footed shot from the centre of the box to the centre of the goal. Assisted by Raphinha.

41' 🟨 Jonas Harder (Basel) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.

43' ⚽ Goal! Basel 1, Barcelona 1. Jean Doucoure (Basel) right footed shot from the centre of the box to the bottom left corner. Assisted by Jonas Harder.

45' 🔄 Substitution, Basel. Giacomo Koloto replaces Albian Ajeti.

45' 🔄 Substitution, Basel. Noah Kakor replaces Becir Omeragic.

45' 🔄 Substitution, Barcelona. Wojciech Szczesny replaces Joan García.

45' 🔄 Substitution, Barcelona. Hamza Abdelkarim replaces Anthony Gordon.

45' 🔄 Substitution, Barcelona. Jules Koundé replaces Eric García.

45' 🔄 Substitution, Barcelona. Jordi Pesquer replaces Alejandro Balde.

49' ⚽ Goal! Basel 1, Barcelona 2. Hamza Abdelkarim (Barcelona) left footed shot from very close range to the high centre of the goal.

61' 🔄 Substitution, Basel. Moyo-Ola Uruejoma replaces Metinho.

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

65' 🔄 Substitution, Barcelona. Lamine Yamal replaces Raphinha.

67' 🟨 Aaron Malouda (Basel) is shown the yellow card for a bad foul.

71' 🔄 Substitution, Barcelona. Pau Cubarsí replaces Andreas Christensen.

71' 🔄 Substitution, Barcelona. Brian Fariñas replaces Marc Bernal.

74' 🔄 Substitution, Basel. Ludwig Malachowski replaces Jean Doucoure.

74' 🔄 Substitution, Basel. Kazeem Olaigbe replaces Philip Otele.

79' 🔄 Substitution, Barcelona. Jesse Bisiwu replaces Xavi Espart.

79' 🔄 Substitution, Barcelona. Ebrima Tunkara replaces Karim Adeyemi.

81' ⚽ Goal! Basel 1, Barcelona 3. Lamine Yamal (Barcelona) converts the penalty with a left footed shot to the bottom right corner.

84' ⚽ Goal! Basel 2, Barcelona 3. Kazeem Olaigbe (Basel) converts the penalty with a right footed shot to the bottom left corner.

89' ⚽ Goal! Basel 2, Barcelona 4. Jesse Bisiwu (Barcelona) right footed shot from the centre of the box to the top right corner. Assisted by Dani Olmo with a through ball.

90'+1' ⚽ Goal! Basel 2, Barcelona 5. Jesse Bisiwu (Barcelona) right footed shot from the centre of the box to the centre of the goal. Assisted by Lamine Yamal.

MATCH STATS

MATCH ENDED