Simeone on Flick’s Barca: They play at a completely different level

• Barcelona lead La Liga on 21 points after seven matches.
• Raphinha has scored 12 goals in that run, with Lamine Yamal adding 7 more.
• Diego Simeone called Hansi Flick’s side “the best” in an interview with ESPN.

Barcelona top La Liga on 21 points, and the loudest compliment about how they got there has come from a rival dugout.

Diego Simeone was blunt on Barcelona: he thinks Hansi Flick has built the best team in Spain, and he said so without being asked twice.

That is a striking admission from a manager whose own side, Atletico Madrid, are still chasing the pace Flick’s team have set.

It tells you something about the scale of what Barcelona have done in seven games that an opponent is happy to say it out loud.

Simeone on Flick’s tactical shift: how it happened

Simeone made the remarks in an interview with ESPN, reported by Goal, when he was asked to explain the shape of this season’s title race.

“They are the best,” he said, before setting out exactly why Flick’s Barcelona have impressed him more than any other side in Spain this season.

He was clear that it is the style, not just the results, that has caught his eye.

“Barcelona play wonderful football, and they seem to be playing at a completely different level from the rest of the teams,” Simeone told ESPN.

That is not a small thing for a coach known for building teams around discipline and structure rather than free-flowing attack.

Simeone then pointed to the personnel behind the numbers.

“In fact, they did not have an out-and-out number 9 striker, then Raphinha appeared and scored 12 goals in 7 matches, while Lamine Yamal, I believe, has scored 7 goals,” he said.

Nineteen goals between two forwards, without a recognised centre forward leading the line, is the detail he kept coming back to.

The scale of that shift was on full display in our report on the Santander win, a 7-2 rout built on the same pressing and movement Simeone describes.

It followed a pattern set earlier in the Champions League opener against Feyenoord, where Flick’s high line was already doing damage before La Liga fully caught on.

The expert angle: Barcelona play a different kind of football

Strip away the flattery and Simeone’s comments amount to a tactical diagnosis.

“The numbers are astonishing, and the team presses its opponents on their own grounds and denies them time and space.

“Barcelona are not afraid to take risks or concede a goal, because they seem all the more superior the more they impose their style, and that is why I see them as the best team at the moment,” he said.

Simeone on Barcelona’s pressing is worth taking seriously precisely because he is not a coach who takes defensive risks lightly.

His own teams sit deep and protect space. Flick’s do the opposite, pushing bodies forward and daring opponents to play through a press rather than around it.

The number 9 point matters too. Most sides build their pressing triggers around a lone striker who sets the line. Barcelona have managed it without one, relying instead on Raphinha and Yamal to lead the press from wide areas while still scoring goals at a rate few recognised strikers in Spain can match this season.

Read the fuller breakdown of that shift in the original analysis on Read Barcelona, and the full transcript of what Simeone told Goal during the same interview.

Both carry the same message: Flick has built a system, not just a strong squad.

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