Two selection headaches appear for Hansi Flick after Barcelona win over Athletic Club | OneFootball

FC Barcelona opened their Spanish Super Cup campaign last night and emerged victorious in their first match of the competition. They beat Athletic Club with a 2-0 scoreline, with goals from Gavi and Lamine Yamal ensuring their team’s presence in the final on Sunday.

Almost all of the Barcelona players who had been unavailable with injuries had recovered for this game, with only Marc-André ter Stegen, Marc Bernal, and Andreas Christensen the ones unavailable due to injuries.

But in addition to these three players, the German tactician was also without two more players, Pau Víctor and Dani Olmo, who were deregistered by La Liga and RFEF after their registrations expired on 31st December.

Barcelona received a precautionary ruling from CSD for their registration, but 24 hours were needed before they could receive their federation card, and thus they were unavailable for the game against Athletic Club.

Thus, one of the two changes that Flick made to his starting lineup on the night was to play Gavi in Olmo’s place. The other change was in goal, where the German coach decided to keep Wojciech Szczęsny in goal as he punished Iñaki Peña for arriving four minutes late for the morning activation session ahead of the match.

As things turned out, both Gavi and Szczęsny put up great performances in this game, and as Mundo Deportivo has noted, this presents Flick with a selection headache for the upcoming Spanish Super Cup final on Sunday.

For this game, Olmo will be back available once again after getting his federation card, while Iñaki Peña will also have sat out a game as his punishment for arriving late for training. Thus, it remains to be seen what decisions the Barcelona coach makes for these two positions, but there is no doubt that this is a rather good problem to have.