Hansi Flick has never been a manager who tips his hand in a press conference. He does it on a teamsheet. And the XI he sent out at the Joan Gamper Trophy on Wednesday, four days before Barca open their LaLiga title defence, looked an awful lot like a first draft of the side that will run out in Elche on Sunday night.
That is the reading of Mundo Deportivo’s Joan Poqui, who argues the Gamper lineup was less an exhibition selection than a statement of where Flick currently is. The context matters: many of his theoretical starters are simply not ready. Spain’s World Cup winners have barely a week and a half of training in their legs, and Poqui writes that they are not yet in contention for the XI – with two exceptions. Joan Garcia came out of the tournament without the same workload, and Eric Garcia only played the closing minutes of the final, the decisive ones.
The XI Mundo Deportivo expect at Elche
Based on the signals Flick has given across pre-season, MD project a side not far off this: Joan Garcia in goal; Eric Garcia, Andreas Christensen, Gerard Martin and Alejandro Balde across the back; Marc Bernal at the base of midfield with Xavi Espart to his left and Fermin Lopez to his right; Raphinha on one flank, Lamine Yamal or Karim Adeyemi on the other; and Hamza Abdelkarim through the middle.
Worth stressing: this is a projection, not a leaked teamsheet. Flick has one more session before the squad travels, and eleven days of a transfer window still to survive.
Where Flick looks settled
The midfield is the clearest part of it. Bernal, Espart and Fermin have all been given repeated minutes through the friendlies, and Bernal and Espart finished pre-season as Barca’s two most-used players. That is not an accident of squad availability; it is a manager telling you something.
The back four is nearly as firm. Eric appears the settled option at right-back, a role we looked at earlier this week, with Gerard Martin fixed as the left-sided centre-back and Christensen expected on the right of the pair. On the other side, Balde reclaimed the left-back spot at the Gamper after Jordi Pesquer had made real ground on him over the summer, per MD – useful timing for a player whose name has spent the week attached to Manchester United.
The question that will not go away
Which leaves the No 9. Hamza Abdelkarim has been Flick’s most-used centre-forward of the pre-season and opened the scoring against his old club in the Gamper, so he starts as the favourite. But MD flag one detail from Wednesday that may matter: when the Egyptian came off, it was Anthony Gordon who took the central role rather than anybody else.
Out wide, Raphinha is a certainty. The right is genuinely open. Adeyemi is further along physically, having had a full pre-season, while Lamine Yamal is, as MD put it, very much Lamine Yamal – a phrase every Culer will translate the same way.
What it adds up to
It is a strange, interesting Barca team: a €60m Ballon d’Or winner in Rodri watching from the bench area, Pedri and Gavi still working back, Frenkie de Jong out with his knee injury, and an 18-year-old from the B team leading the line at the start of a title defence. Flick has spent the summer building depth in every department except the one he asked for first.
Kick-off at the Estadio Manuel Martinez Valero is 21:30 on Sunday. Whatever XI appears on the team sheet, the Gamper already told us most of it – and the one line still blank is the same line Deco is trying to fill before 31 August.
