By Peter Ochieng
German Hansi Flick has been named the new Barcelona manager.
He takes over from club legend Xavi Hernandez, who was sacked last week despite reneging on his earlier announcement of leaving the La Liga giants’ hot seat at the end of the 2023/2024 season.
The German tactician has signed a two-year contract at Barcelona, which will take him to the summer of 2026.
“FC Barcelona and Hansi Flick have reached an agreement for the German to become men’s first team football coach until 30 June 2026. The new coach has signed a contract at the Club’s offices accompanied by FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta; first vice president responsible for the sporting area, Rafa Yuste and the Club’s sporting director, Anderson Luís de Souza, Deco,” Barca announced in a press statement.
“By bringing Hansi Flick as coach, FC Barcelona have chosen a man well known for his teams’ high pressing, intense and daring style of play which has brought him great success at club level and international level, winning pretty much all there is to win in the world of football.”
Flick won the treble with Bayern Munich in 2020 when he guided the Bavarian giants to the Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal and Champions League titles. His subsequent stint with the German national team however failed to produce results.
After guiding Barcelona to the last game of the 2023/2024 season on Sunday, Xavi warned the incoming coach that all is not well at the Camp Nou.
“They should know that they’ve got a difficult situation, because Barca is a difficult club and there’s an adverse financial situation too — it won’t be easy at all,” he said.
“I think the work we’ve done has not been valued enough given the adverse situation we came from. Barca were ninth in the table when we arrived, we finished second… (then) we won a double, and this year we weren’t up to the standard but because of four key games.”
He said given another chance in the future; he would jump at the chance to coach Barca again.