Hansi Flick started Brian Fariñas, an academy midfielder playing out of position, at right-back against an Atlético Madrid team built around attacking exactly that kind of weakness. Ten minutes in, Giuliano Simeone scored off a pass from Julián Álvarez. Flick spent the rest of the half watching his gamble get exposed, then sent on Frenkie de Jong at the break, still at right-back, and watched Barcelona turn the game around. Fermín López scored twice, Barcelona won 2-1, and now half of Spain is writing columns about Flick's tactical genius.
He doesn't get credit for this one.
Eric García had been cleared to play and was available off the bench. Flick chose not to risk him and started Fariñas instead, for a third straight match in a role he isn't built for. Koundé and Espart were out, but this wasn't an emergency. There was a safer option sitting right there, and Flick didn't take it. The result was predictable, and it arrived in the tenth minute.
What happened after halftime was real. De Jong settled the right side, Barcelona took control of the game, and Pedri ran the show from midfield, completing well over 600 passes at better than 90% accuracy while hitting the woodwork himself. Fermín's brace, including a goal that arrived on his 100th LaLiga appearance and was his eighth league goal of the season, is why Barcelona sat three points clear at the top of the table through Matchday 12, heading into the international break, having snapped Atlético's own winning streak along the way. That's a good night's work by the players who actually did it.
Flick's starting selection gets left out of that sentence. The coach is being given credit for solving a problem of his own design, and that's a different thing from foresight. Reacting well to your own mess at halftime is competent management, a different skill from getting the call right the first time.
The people arguing the whole ninety minutes were ugly have a point too. Cancelo was poor enough at left-back that Flick had to pull him for Christensen, and Fariñas got hooked. There wasn't a clean, convincing performance in there before the switch, and pretending there was lets everyone off easy. Álvarez missed a string of good chances, including a lob that came back off the woodwork, and that swung the game Barcelona's way too. Diego Simeone said afterward he'll give his striker time to find his form again. He'll need to, because Álvarez created Atlético's goal and then spent the rest of the night missing the ones that could have buried Barcelona for good.
Flick deserves credit for not freezing at halftime. He doesn't deserve the word everyone's reaching for. A masterstroke is a plan that works. This was a mistake that got cleaned up by Frenkie de Jong, Pedri, and a misfiring striker at the other end, and Flick should be thanking all three of them before he starts believing his own press.
