One key matchday morning routine is quite ‘sacred’ for Hansi Flick at Barcelona | OneFootball

With his arrival at FC Barcelona, Hansi Flick has brought some very distinct training and management approaches. The new methods have proven their effectiveness with the team’s results in most of the games up to now.

One of the aspects of Flick’s management that have been highlighted a lot in the media is his strong emphasis on punctuality, as several first-team players have already borne the brunt of his displeasure for being late.

As SPORT has reported, among the events for which the German trainer is particularly strict on punctuality are the activation sessions that take place before a game on a matchday. Under Flick, the emphasis on these sessions has increased severely, and these sessions are an integral part of the team’s routine.

On Champions League matchdays, when the matches are almost always scheduled for the night, the Barcelona coach gathers his players in a hotel room, in a gym, or in a stadium’s training facilities if these are situated near the team’s residence, around 10-11 AM. During these sessions, the team undertakes some light exercises to activate the muscles and joints.

But in addition to these physical exercises, Flick and his staff also undertake some individual talks with the players and review their tactical aspects and the opponents ahead of a match.

While such procedures are quite commonly followed by other teams and coaches, for Flick, these have very marked importance, and he does not miss them in any case, irrespective of the competition or the venue of a match.

The importance of these sessions in Flick’s mind is quite apparent from the fact that several Barcelona players have already been punished for arriving only a few minutes late for these events. This was recently the case with Inaki Pena, who lost his starting place in the Spanish Super Cup semi-final for being late, and Jules Kounde has also been punished twice in the past for being late.