Flick moves on from the sentimental Barça player: Athletic Club's hot takes on Barça

BarcelonaBarça said goodbye to the rewarding 2024-2025 season. with a victory against Athletic Club (0-3) thanks to two goals from Robert Lewandowski and one from Dani Olmo from the penalty spot. Here are some quick notes on the match.

Emotions lack prominence. Even the most sentimental Barça fan could imagine that at San Mamés, before setting out to find their swimsuit and flip-flops, they would witness the final Barça start of the player who seemed destined to occupy the heavenly place claimed by Lamine Yamal: Ansu Fati. And that perhaps they would revisit a play by Pau Víctor (Flick only gave him second-half injury time) that would remind them of the ones that made them get up from the couch at midnight last summer before the Sant Cugat del Vallés native entered the room of ostracism, the prelude to an exit. This sentimental Barça fan, therefore, must have been disappointed when they saw that Hansi Flick was opting to go out and play with a lineup worthy of a Champions League final.

This isn't Hollywood. If Ansu Fati's life were an American movie, the striker would have risen from the ashes to, in one of the very few opportunities Flick has given him this season, score a decisive goal that would turn his destiny around. But Ansu Fati's life hasn't been heroic for a long time. Ansu Fati's life is earthly and could more easily be the script for a movie with a tormented protagonist, let's say directed by Aki Kaurismäki. The youngest player to score in the history of the Champions League was already left wanting to say goodbye to the Barça fans on the pitch, and Flick didn't let him say goodbye to Barça from the San Mamés turf either. Ansu Fati is only 22 years old and his future is crystal clear.

The only exception. It would be disingenuous to ignore the fact that Hansi Flick had a space in Bilbao for the emotional complexity of goodbyes. The exception that proves the rule was Iñaki Peña, the Barça player he has been most unfair to this season, depriving him of the opportunity of a lifetime to unseat Szczesny without any punishable offense. The goalkeeper trained at La Masia, who will also leave Barça this summer, didn't have a stressful day at San Mamés because, despite Athletic Club's dangerous approach, they didn't force him to shine. His only decisive save was to clear a poor clearance from Cubarsí that was headed straight for the net.

102 screams. Robert Lewandowski didn't choose a discreet way to help Barça reach 100 goals in this La Liga season, a figure no team had matched since Barça surpassed it in the 2016-2017 season. The Pole, who in the final stretch of the season, hampered by injuries, has begun to show signs of decline befitting his almost 37 years, suddenly rejuvenated when he received a through ball from Pedri's crossbar and converted it into a lob impossible for Unai Simón to beat. Shortly after, he scored his 101st goal with a header. Dani Olmo added the icing on the cake from the penalty spot, beating Unai Simón, his teammate on the national team, with whom he joked before shooting.