Hansi Flick has thrown down a challenge to his Barcelona players: prove they can live with the financial muscle and intensity of “the best league in the world” when they walk into St. James’ Park on Tuesday night.
LaLiga’s leaders head to Newcastle for the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie, a reunion with Eddie Howe’s side after their league-phase meeting earlier in the campaign. Barcelona edged that one 2-1, Marcus Rashford striking twice to give Flick’s men the perfect start to a European run that eventually saw them finish fifth in the new-look group format.
This, though, is a very different stage and a very different kind of test.
Barcelona have long made a habit of handling English opposition when it really matters. They’ve faced Premier League clubs 33 times in the Champions League knockout rounds and won 10 of their last 12 such ties since 2014. Yet the landscape has shifted. Six English sides – Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester City, Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal – have all muscled their way into the last 16, a reminder of where the money and depth of talent currently sit.
Flick is under no illusions about that power shift, but he is also in no mood to play the underdog.
“The Premier League is a great league – for me, it’s the best league in the world and they have strong teams,” he told reporters on the eve of the game. “Of course, they have also a lot of money to make the right decisions… how many, six teams now in the next round?
“For me, okay, we are strong, we have huge quality also, not only Newcastle or Manchester City or Arsenal or Tottenham or the others.
“We have to continue our way, our style, how we want to play. This is our philosophy. We want to play like Barca in the Champions League because our supporters are proud of us and the way we play football, so this is what we want to show also tomorrow.”
That commitment to identity has become Flick’s calling card in Catalonia. He arrived with the weight of history on his shoulders and the shadow of the club’s last Champions League triumph in 2015 looming over every European night. Nearly a decade on from that treble, Barcelona are still chasing the same feeling.
Newcastle, meanwhile, come into the tie with a curious split personality. In Europe, they are on the longest unbeaten run in their Champions League history, five games without defeat, three of them wins. Domestically, they have been far less convincing. Howe’s side sit 12th in the Premier League, well off the pace in the race for the top four and nine points adrift of the Champions League spots.
Flick, though, is not reading too much into league form.
“The Champions League is different. Everyone who plays now at this stage wants to show their best,” he said. “They are a team which on transition, they have very fast players and very good players, outstanding players, and we have to handle that and manage it.”
St. James’ Park under the lights will not be a forgiving place for a side that wants to impose a patient, possession-based game. Newcastle’s energy, their speed in transition and the raw noise from the stands have already unsettled more settled European heavyweights. Flick knows that if Barcelona are to bring a result back to Catalonia, his players will have to match intensity with intelligence.
All of this comes against a turbulent backdrop in Barcelona. Flick’s comments were made while a public row rumbles on between club president Joan Laporta and his predecessor Xavi, with the added complication of next week’s presidential election hanging over the club. It is classic Barça: politics never far from the pitch.
Flick, though, is doing his best to keep the noise on mute.
“It’s one of the most important weeks in the season now because we want to go to the next round. We have a game here, and we have to focus on the game,” he said.
“What I can say is everything here in Barcelona is great. I’m here one-and-a-half years, and I’m enjoying every single day working with this fantastic team, with these fantastic players, with this staff around.
“Now we are building this club also for the future. This is what we want to do. When I have gone, maybe the next coach can say, ‘Okay, Hansi did a fantastic job, I have good infrastructure’. This is what we are doing now.”
It is an unusually candid glimpse into how Flick sees his role. He is not just chasing results; he is trying to lay foundations – a coherent style, a competitive squad, a structure that can outlast him. Beating Newcastle over two legs, and punching through to the last eight, would be a powerful argument that Barcelona can still compete with the Premier League’s wealth and depth on their own terms.
This will be the sixth Champions League meeting between the clubs. The stakes are familiar, but the context is not. Barcelona arrive as domestic leaders yet European outsiders in some eyes, Newcastle as mid-table in England but dangerous in Europe, the embodiment of the Premier League’s strength in depth that Flick is so keen to measure himself against.
On Tuesday night in the North East, amid the roar and the rain, we will see whether his Barcelona can do more than admire “the best league in the world” – and actually knock one of its standard-bearers out of the way.
