Report – The key errors Flick does not want to see from Barcelona against Crvena Zvezda
Barcelona secured another crucial win on Sunday when they beat local rivals RCD Espanyol 3-1 at the Montjuic Stadium in La Liga.
However, It was a rather display unusual from Hansi Flick’s Barça as the team played two different matches in the two halves – A dominant first half where they scored three goals, and a second half where they forgot their defensive duties, and lost intensity and focus.
No room for error
However, as reported by SPORT, Hansi Flick wants his Barcelona to not repeat two key errors against Crvena Zvezda in the UEFA Champions League that they did against Espanyol.
In the derby, with less urgency and without the attention to detail shown in the first half, Barcelona looked vulnerable in the second period and as such the manager does not want to see his team repeat those mistakes on Wednesday.
After a week of maximum effort, with victories against Bayern Munich and Real Madrid, the Barça players lowered their tempo after the first period as they saw the derby was settled, and Espanyol gave them a few scares in the second half.
Flick admitted that he had not liked certain aspects of the second-half performance and used Tennis as an example.
“In tennis, there’s something called unforced errors, which we had today. I’m happy with the victory, although we lost concentration in the second half. I’ll accept it today because we won, but we need to sort this out by Wednesday,” he emphasised.
“I told the team I would accept the second half because they’ve done great work until now, but I won’t accept something like this on Wednesday,” he insisted.
In the second half of the derby, the Barça forwards pressed less, the midfield stopped flowing, and the high defensive line became somewhat of an ordeal for the defenders.
Puado took advantage to reduce the deficit, and Espanyol caused damage, particularly down the left flank, by exploiting the space behind the Blaugrana defence.
On Wednesday in Belgrade, Barcelona returns to Champions League action to face a Crvena Zvezda team that has been unstoppable in their domestic league but has struggled in Europe’s premier competition.
And, Flick expects to see the usual dynamic of this Barcelona side without the mistakes they made on Sunday.
