The only battle Hansi Flick has not been able to win

BarcelonaThe sun is shining as we leave the office, the fields are green, the trees have blossomed, the reservoirs are around 65% full, and Barça can still win it all. This is what spring 2025 looks like for thousands of Catalans, for now. Despite the setback, Saturday in the League against Betis, Barcelona fans are approaching the next two months with an enthusiasm they haven't had since 2019, one that takes them back to 2009 and 2015. The hungry stomachs of Lamine Yamal, Pedri, Raphinha and company are giving millions of Barça fans butterflies. The next test, on Wednesday (9 p.m., M. Champions League) against Borussia Dortmund in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals, will demand the best version of a team in which Ansu Fati is a wilted flower amidst the green shoots.

While his teammates, from Szczęsny to Pablo Torre, are getting excited about the pollen season and Sant Jordi, the young Spanish-Guinean striker is realizing that Hansi Flick wasn't exactly on a roll when, during the January transfer window, he recommended that he look for a way out. When he arrived at Barça, the German allowed himself to get his hopes up, but as the months went by, he realized he couldn't expect the same things from him as other attackers: voracity off the ball, generous mobility, and electric movement. In the midst of his disappointment, the coach even tried him out for a bit in midfield, although the experiment didn't work out either. It was at the beginning of October, in the Barça-Young Boys match, which became Ansu's last non-hostile appearance in the Champions League.

Fati is the only battle that Flick has not been able to win in his first training session in Barcelona. Unlike Raphinha, Lewandowski, Ferran, Pedri or Casadó, who with the German have discovered (or recovered) their primeThe Barça No. 10 has become a lost cause. Unseen since early January, when he had a few minutes in a resounding Copa del Rey match against Barbastro (0-4), he has rejected all offers he's received to try his luck in a less demanding environment than the one Barça currently offers a striker. When other clubs ask Deco and Bojan about their situation, the two Barça representatives in the sporting directorate don't respond by rubbing their hands together over a possible transfer, but rather by huffing and puffing and raising their eyebrows. They are aware that Ansu has a star contract until 2027 and that only he has the recipe for ending the ostracism he's suffering.

The bad decision of Jorge Mendes and Bori Fati

At this point, Barça has gone from seeing Fati as a future asset to treating him as a present expense. His decline in performance has led the club to be willing to accept any solution that would allow him to wear a different shirt and, in the process, save a portion, however small, of his multimillion-dollar salary. Only Lewandowski, De Jong, and Pedri earn more than the current Barça squad, a broken toy due not only to the initial meniscus ordeal but also to the poor management of subsequent muscle injuries associated with the inactivity caused by the first incident. "If the club's professionals had been listened to and not so much to those around them, to the representatives and external advisors, we wouldn't have gotten to where we are," he lamented today at the Ciudad Deportiva, where the most experienced players have long been comparing Ansu's slump with that of Samuel Umtiti. Neither accepted surgery as a solution to their problems. Now they are paying the consequences.

"I know it's not easy for him. The only thing I can say about the players who aren't playing is to give 100% to show me they should play more." These are harsh words from Flick toward Ansu, who on Saturday, after a month of scrupulously observing Ramadan, once again saw his role reduced to a warm-up without reward. Contrary to what is looming on the horizon for his teammates, for him this spring will be a barren season. If he celebrates titles, it will be in a tracksuit rather than in shorts.