Two critical mistakes Hansi Flick urges Barcelona not to repeat against Red Star Belgrade | OneFootball

FC Barcelona continued their winning run in their last game against Espanyol. The Blaugranas emerged victorious with a 3-1 scoreline, extending their lead over Real Madrid in the La Liga table to 9 points.

However, Hansi Flick was far from satisfied with this match, and he made his feelings known during the press conference afterward. The German coach was clear that the team must ensure it does not repeat the mistakes made against Espanyol in the upcoming UEFA Champions League tie against Red Star Belgrade.

From the German trainer’s comments after this match, SPORT has identified two aspects of the team’s performance in the Barcelona derby that left Flick unsatisfied, and which he will be looking to ensure he does not see again in the match against Red Star Belgrade.

Talking about his team’s performance against Espanyol, the former Bayern Munich coach used a tennis term to describe his team’s weakness: “In tennis, there’s something called unforced errors, and we had some of those today. I’m happy with the win, but in the second half, we lost focus. I’ll accept it today because we won, but we need to fix this for Wednesday.”

Flick also shared what he told the team after the uninspiring 2nd half performance: “I told the team that I would accept the second half because they’ve done a great job up to now, but on Wednesday, I won’t accept something like this.”

However, he did acknowledge that it happens sometimes: “Normally, we’re focused with mentality and intensity, but sometimes this happens.”

It was the lack of Flick’s desired mentality and also the lack of intensity that led to the decline in the team’s performance in the second half.

As the forwards eased their pressing, the midfield stopped functioning at an optimal level, and the Espanyol attackers started to make things difficult for the Barcelona defense.

Hopefully, the team will be able to retain these two basic elements of Flick’s play style for the full 90 minutes in the upcoming Champions League match in Belgrade.