After sacking Xavi Hernández, barely a month after convincing him to stay, Barcelona turned to Hansi Flick for certainty in uncertain times. On 29 May 2024, the German became only the third German manager to take charge of the club.

Flick arrived with quite the reputation. At Bayern Munich, he had built a team that played fast, pressed relentlessly and defended with an aggressive high line and, most importantly, won. His Champions League triumph in 2020 had already established him as one of Europe's elite coaches.

The Flick Effect

Barcelona, in Flick's first season, collected three trophies, fell narrowly short of a Champions League final and scored 173 goals in all competitions, a striking output for a young and largely inexperienced squad that had struggled for consistency under the previous manager.

Yet the numbers, impressive as they are, do not paint the full picture.

The better Barcelona looked on the pitch, the more obvious the problems around them became.

The Same Old Problems

Barcelona spent years living beyond their means, particularly under Josep Maria Bartomeu. Then came the pandemic, which only made an already ugly situation worse. By the time Bartomeu left in 2020, the club was drowning in debt and carrying a wage bill that left very little room to manoeuvre.

The problem is that Barcelona still have to live with the mess that has been created. La Liga's salary cap has made registrations a constant headache, forcing the club into short-term fixes like renegotiating contracts, deferring payments and squeezing whatever room they can find out of the market. It has kept them competitive, but it has made building the squad they actually need all the harder.

Flick's football is physically and tactically demanding. It is built on relentless intensity, a high defensive line and a willingness to leave very little room for error. To make it work over an entire season, you need athleticism, the right profiles and, perhaps most importantly, depth. A luxury Barcelona can barely afford.

Making Do

Few examples illustrate this more clearly than the failure to replace Iñigo Martínez following his unprecedented contract termination in August 2025 to join Al Nassr.

Martínez had been a domineering presence alongside Pau Cubarsí, a crucial part of the high line Flick wants to play. Yet Barcelona neither prioritised nor, more frustratingly, could afford a like-for-like replacement, instead resorting to makeshift solutions, most recently deploying Gerard Martín in an unfamiliar role.

Ordinarily, a season like Flick's first would have been followed by serious reinforcement. Success, after all, is supposed to buy you support.

Instead, Barcelona came out of the 2025 summer window with Marcus Rashford on loan, Joan García as their only permanent first-team signing, and Roony Bardghji, who was initially expected to be more of a development project than an immediate solution.

When La Masia Becomes a Necessity

Barcelona have always leaned on their youth. La Masia has given the club some of its greatest players: Messi, Guardiola, Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets. Generation after generation, the academy has produced players capable of flourishing in Blaugrana colours.

Today, though, that reliance feels less like a choice and more like necessity.

Under Flick, it means asking very young players to take on enormous responsibility. Pau Cubarsí, still only 18, is expected to hold his own at the heart of an extremely aggressive defensive line, where one mistimed step can leave an entire defence exposed.

How is that fair? At what other club is this normal?

Flick Can Only Do So Much

Of course, Flick has already shown that he can get an awful lot out of this squad. Three trophies and 173 goals in his first season are hardly the numbers of a manager struggling to make things work. If anything, he has made Barcelona's limitations easier to overlook.

The better Flick does, the easier it becomes to forget what this squad is missing. He can squeeze more from his players, but he cannot create depth where there is none or turn every academy player into a finished product overnight.

Barcelona still need a left-sided centre-back, a defensive midfielder, more depth at full-back and a centre-forward to lead the line heading into the 2026 summer window.

Flick has already shown Barcelona what this team can be. The question now is whether the club can give him the squad to sustain it.