Hansi Flick confirms €60m Barcelona captain felt ‘some discomfort’ ahead of Sevilla clash | OneFootball

FC Barcelona finally return to club football action as the Catalan giants hope to continue their good form. La Blaugrana remain hopeful as ever with this current group of players, and they continue to trust the work of Hansi Flick. The first fixture back for Barcelona, however, will be against Sevilla.

In many ways, the team led by Garcia Pimienta can clearly hurt this Barcelona team. For that reason, Hansi Flick’s tactical decisions and tweaks within the line-up will have to be precise and clear to adjust to the measures that Sevilla will likely take in order to make things difficult for the Catalan team.

Unfortunately, however, it would seem that Hansi Flick did not have everything go to plan as he would have ideally hoped for them to go. Ahead of the game, as highlighted by Mundo Deportivo, the Barcelona coach admitted that his initial plan was to start Frenkie de Jong, but the Dutchman feels ‘some discomfort’ ahead of the game itself:

“We’ll see tomorrow. Yesterday, he felt some discomfort, and today he started with the group but then trained separately. I wanted to start him, but we’ll see.”

For Flick, these recurring physical issues within his team continue to hold back the kind of quality he can count on during games. The €60 million-rated Barcelona captain is one of the most technically gifted players in this current squad, and the German tactician would much rather have him fully fit than not.

Instead, he will have to rely on other options to do the work that he seemed to have initially planned for De Jong to do in this upcoming game. While several players will likely return for this upcoming fixture, it seems that most of them will have to start on the bench.

As for De Jong, the Dutchman could also participate in the game as a substitute. His physical discomforts have been a recurring occurrence by this point, and the entire saga over his surgery was something that even the player himself had to come out and discuss. However, according to the latest update from Adria Albets, the player’s most recent discomfort has nothing to do with his previous ankle injury but it could lead to him being left out of the squad for the next game.