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Hansi Flick addresses the issue of Barcelona captaincy after controversy in the last match

Beyond their performances on the pitch, another factor that characterizes Hansi Flick’s tenure at FC Barcelona up to now is the harmony and good feeling in the dressing room.

Even as the Blaugrana team has experienced a blip in La Liga, this harmony has not really been threatened, and the players seem united and keen to come out of this difficult phase.

However, one event from the last match against Las Palmas still raised some eyebrows. Opposite to what has been the custom for the last few weeks, Raphinha did not hand over the captain’s armband to Frenkie de Jong when the Dutchman made his way to the pitch from the bench in the second half.

Although this detail was not the most pressing matter for the Catalans as they failed to win three La Liga games in a row, this affair still made its way to the headlines, and as SPORT has reported, was also discussed in Hansi Flick’s press conference ahead of tonight’s game against Mallorca.

The Barcelona coach was rather surprised to get a question on this matter, but downplayed its importance and made it clear that there has been no change in the team’s captaincy order:

“There have been no changes in the captaincy, and I’m not aware of any changes within the team. On the field, I didn’t notice anything. In Germany, we don’t do the thing where we pass the captain’s armband around on the field; that’s something done here, and I don’t know why they didn’t do it.”

Marc Andre ter Stegen, Ronald Araujo, Frenkie de Jong, Raphinha, and Pedri were elected by the team as the captains at the start of this season, but due to the absence of the first three, Raphinha has been the team’s captain for most part of the season.

But with Frenkie’s return, he will be the first in line to get the armband whenever he is on the pitch. But it is easy to reason that the team was struggling to get a result against Las Palmas when Frenkie got on the pitch in the last game, and changing the armband would not have been the first thing on the players’ minds, and thus, that event did not reflect any change in the team roles.