Barcelona have played five matches this season and won all five. They have scored 22 goals in the process, at least five in four of those games, and they finished a midweek Champions League night against Feyenoord looking like a side that could have gone again on Thursday morning. Hansi Flick spent pre-season warning everyone that his squad would not be near 100% until after the international break. A month in, the team has comfortably ignored him — and one of the clearest explanations sits on the coaching staff rather than the pitch.
As Barça Universal report, citing SPORT, a significant share of the credit for Barcelona’s physical condition belongs to Benjamin Kugel, the German physical trainer Flick pushed the club to hire in the summer.
Why Benjamin Kugel was Flick’s personal request
Kugel did not arrive as a conventional club appointment. He came at Flick’s express request, with a fixed idea of how he wanted to work and very little interest in easing his way in. He is described as demanding to the point of being uncomfortable, and his method leans heavily on individualisation: rather than running a single group programme, he builds personalised plans around what each player’s body actually needs.
The complication was the calendar. A World Cup summer meant Kugel initially had only the non-internationals to work with, which is the worst possible starting position for a fitness coach trying to install a new physical culture. The players who went to the tournament joined late and, by most expectations, should have been the ones lagging behind. They came back in notably good condition instead.
The numbers behind Barcelona’s physical start
The distance data from the 5-1 win over Feyenoord is the headline figure. Barcelona covered 120 kilometres to Feyenoord’s 113.7 — and the direction of that gap matters as much as its size, because for several seasons Barcelona were the side being out-run by physically aggressive opponents rather than the other way round.
For context, SPORT’s comparison points are instructive. Real Madrid covered 108.3 kilometres against Inter Milan on the same Champions League matchday. Barcelona themselves managed 112 in their Champions League exit to Atletico Madrid last season. Same competition, same intensity of occasion, eight kilometres of difference.
The duel numbers back it up rather than contradict it, which is the part that should reassure anyone who distrusts distance covered as a metric on its own. Per Sofascore, Barcelona have won the physical battle in almost every fixture so far: 60% of duels against Elche, 56% against Rayo Vallecano, 57% against Valencia, and a narrow edge over Feyenoord. Only Athletic Club came out on top, and only narrowly.
What it means for the season ahead
Running further does not win football matches by itself. What it does is widen the range of things a team can do in the last half-hour, and Barcelona’s goal record has an obvious relationship with it. Sides that press in the 80th minute the way they press in the 20th tend to score late, and Flick’s team keep scoring late.
It also reframes the 22-goal start as something other than a hot streak. Goals dry up. Physical baselines are more stable, and if the underlying fitness is real, the goals have a better chance of surviving the winter than a run of finishing luck would.
The caveat Flick himself supplied still stands. If this is the level before the squad is properly conditioned, then the genuine test of Kugel’s work arrives later — in the fixture pile-up between November and February, and in whether Barcelona are still out-running opponents in March. For now, a manager who told everyone to expect a slow start is watching his team out-run Europe, and the coach he insisted on hiring is the reason most often given.
