Barcelona manager Hansi Flick has ‘three faces’ while doing job | OneFootball

Barcelona manager Hansi Flick is flavour of the month in Catalonia, having led the Blaugrana to the top of the table playing entertaining football and most recently, standing up to Bayern Munich in the Champions League. Even his most fervent supporters did not see his start to life in Barcelona going this well.

Despite defeats to AS Monaco and Osasuna, there is little else that Flick could have done better so far, and any doubts about his ability to adapt have been erased swiftly. So far, Barcelona have looked better in every aspect, as Diario AS describe. They say the German coach has three different approaches to life as manager: one for the press, one for the fans, and another for the players.

With the players, Flick is a ‘tough leader’ and a coach who is close to the players. He motivates the players, and so far has gotten the best out of them. With the press, Flick does his best to keep a low profile, avoid tricky questions, and keep awat from the headlines. His lack of Spanish is the perfect excuse to remain under the radar. Meanwhile with the fans, Flick is very personable too. The German ‘never has a no for anyone’, and always stops at the entrance of the training ground to sign autographs.

There is little doubt that one of the concerns with Flick’s appointment would be his ability to understand and adapt to a club as idiosyncratic as Barcelona. Now his lack of language skills and ignoring of the ‘entorno’ is being underlined as an advantage. Most of Barcelona’s success has come with managers who knew the club previously, but so far Flick is following in the footsteps of Frank Rijkaard.