Coaching in a Clásico: What’s it like in the dugout for Real Madrid vs. Barcelona?

Hansi Flick has been involved in some of the biggest games in football as a player, assistant coach and manager, but Saturday’s trip to Real Madrid — his first Clásico as Barcelona boss — may end up topping the lot. Those who have been involved in the fixture detail a pressure, media environment and political edge unrivaled by almost any other game. Others say the tension around the match makes it impossible to enjoy the actual 90 minutes of football.

Flick has conducted himself well as Barça coach so far. He has not complained about the club’s tricky financial situation, a series of long-term injuries or about having to turn to the youth teams to fill out his squad. It has helped that results have accompanied him: nine wins from 10 games in LaLiga and a three-point lead over Madrid at the top of the table heading into this weekend’s showdown at the Santiago Bernabéu (stream LIVE at 3 p.m. ET on ESPN+).

However, all that good work could go out the window should his side fail to get a result in the Clásico. It is the game that is circled in red as soon as the fixtures are announced. For some Barça fans, beating Madrid is even more important than winning the league. It’s important to get that message across to coaches when they arrive from abroad.

The late Terry Venables, Barcelona coach between 1984 and 1987, said in an interview in 2017: “People stopped me in the street and told me: ‘Terry, you’ll never win LaLiga, but don’t worry, as long as you beat Madrid, everyone will be happy.'”

Venables coached in a different era, mind. Barça hadn’t won LaLiga for a decade when the Englishman took over. He won the title in his first season. Now they are expected to win the league every yearb and the pressure has increased substantially.

“This is baloney,” Henk ten Cate, Frank Rijkaard’s assistant at Barça between 2004 and 2007, told ESPN when asked whether beating Madrid is what matters most. “The title is the most important. It takes away a little of the shine when you don’t win a game against Madrid but you win the title, but winning the title is still the most important because it means over the season you are the best team.”

The truth is, the two teams are often so evenly matched that these games have a direct impact on where the title goes. Winning the Clásico and winning the title cannot be separated. Madrid won both Clásicos last season and won LaLiga; if Barça had won them both, they would have clinched the title.

“I would say there is a heightened sense of anticipation going into these games and that’s created, I suppose, from the outside,” Paul Clement, Carlo Ancelotti’s assistant at Madrid between 2013 and 2015, told ESPN. “The media, the coverage, the talk amongst the fans, it’s building. You sense that and you feel that. You also know that you’re going to have an impact on where the title goes. They’re six-point games.”

A rivalry beyond football

Most derbies pit two teams from the same city against each other, or at least two teams from the same geographical area. The Clásico brings together two different parts of Spain: Madrid, the capital city where central government is based, and Barcelona, nearly 400 miles to the east in Catalonia, a region of Spain where there is an ongoing push for independence.

“It’s different from all of the other derbies you play in the world because this is the more political one,” Ten Cate adds. “You have the establishment in Madrid and then Catalonia, the free spirits of Catalonia and the Catalan people. So it’s more than a game, it’s also politics.

“This is what makes it extra different from all of the other matches you will play. For instance, in the Netherlands you have Ajax–Feyenoord, which is hot. You have Chelsea–Arsenal, Manchester United–Manchester City, Liverpool–Everton, those are derbies but on a different level.”

That element of the rivalry even surprised Venables during his time in Catalonia, who said back in 2017: “The ferocity was far more severe than I thought it was. I mean it was just, everything geared around the football club and the fixture, even politics is linked in with the club.”

The fact the fixture is so consequential to where the title could end up, and laced with historical and political significance, means that an intense media atmosphere and an immense pressure on all those involved builds to a crescendo in the weeks leading up to the game. Bobby Robson, Barça coach for the 1996-97 season, had coached the England national team and clubs all over Europe before moving to Camp Nou, but even he was surprised by the level of criticism he and his side faced at times.

“This is the phenomenon of Barcelona,” Robson told the BBC in 1996. “It’s what they call here the entorno [the environment around the club]. It’s not the pressure from inside, it’s from the outside.

“The day that Barça are one point behind Madrid is a day of panic. They don’t like that because they are afraid they might lose the next game and go four points behind Madrid and this a complete and utter disaster. So they’re always on that verge of despair if you like.”

It’s a feeling Ten Cate recognises. He tells ESPN: “This is something created by the press. Weeks before the game they already start talking about it. Players who are not fit, if they can make it in the game against Madrid. In the meanwhile you still have to play two or three matches before you play Madrid.”

‘Half the world is watching you’

All that surrounds this fixture can make it difficult to enjoy the fact you have reached the pinnacle of the game: coaching either Barça or Madrid in one of the biggest fixtures, if not the biggest, in club football.

“The atmosphere was spectacular,” Quique Setién, who was Barça coach for a Clásico in 2020, tells ESPN. “There is so much tension involved in the fixture and you really feel it. You know that half the world is watching you, how you play, what you do.

“It’s electrifying. More because of the pressure and the responsibility you have than for actually enjoying [the games] as I did somewhere like [lower-league side] Lugo, where during my six years I enjoyed football.

“[Coaching in the Clásico] is totally different because enjoying football at a big club is more difficult. Everything is conditioned by the result and by winning matches. There is a lot of responsibility. The pressure is huge. You feel it on the streets and around the club. At these big clubs, you have to win. That’s the norm. Nothing else is good enough.”

The sensation was similar for Clement, who also worked with Ancelotti at Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain and Bayern Munich. He says: “I can’t remember enjoying the games, I have to say. And you can imagine, that’s as an assistant, so imagine the pressure on the coach. I’ve had that feeling as an assistant coach and the feeling you get is different when you’re a head coach, the pressure. I can only imagine the feeling that Carlo has during those games.”

Blocking out the noise

Despite all the factors at play, most of the coaches insist routine — and staying true to yourself — is the best way to prepare for the games. Jordi Roura, who worked as Tito Vilanova’s assistant in the 2012-13 season and was interim coach for several months due to Vilanova’s illness at the time, tells ESPN that the approach with the players never changed. However, he acknowledged much more work went on behind the scenes when the Madrid games came around.

“You have to, where possible, try and reduce the excitement levels when preparing the team,” he says. “Don’t say anything too different. The game sells itself. Everyone already knows how big this game is. The local lads live in a different way, but those that come in from elsewhere quickly realise what it means.

“From a coaching perspective, in our time, we would analyse eight matches of each upcoming opponent. For the Clásico, that would go up to 12. We also had a playbook at the start of each season. We would always try and reserve some of those plays or dead-ball strategies for the Clásico, to add that element of surprise. We knew that Madrid would be looking at everything as well, so we wanted to keep some things back for those fixtures.”

As Venables told John Toshack when the Welshman took the Real Madrid job in 1989: “At the end of the day, if you try and listen to [all the noise] you’re going to come unstuck. You know that. You have got to just say, I am not going to listen. Because if you try to please everyone, you please no one and if you do it your way and it goes wrong, you’re going to be happy with yourself.”

That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it once the full-time whistle goes. Venables said in 2005 that his first Clásico — which was also the first league game of the season — in 1984, a 3-0 away win, was the best moment of his career.

Ten Cate doesn’t remember his first — a loss — too fondly. But a 3-0 win at the Bernabéu in 2005, when Ronaldinho was given a standing ovation by the home supporters, left its mark and showed there are moments when the rivalry can subside.

“[You enjoy it] if you finish the game as the winner,” he says. “I remember winning in Madrid when the white part of the stadium was applauding Ronaldinho. He played so extremely well that game that it was like football from another planet. And people recognised that.”

Flick has been in the game long enough to have an idea of what awaits him. But he’s new to the Barça job and he’s not yet experienced the Clásico rivalry from the inside. He will take to the Bernabéu dugout on Saturday thinking not only about how to deal with Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior — fresh from his stunning hat trick in the Champions League on Tuesday; something his own player Raphinha replicated the following night — but also the occasion itself.

It’s games like this and the atmosphere that surrounds them that wore many of his predecessors down. Pep Guardiola walked away after three years, as did Luis Enrique. Lose on Saturday and Flick may get a taste of what exhausted his predecessors so much. Win and he will share in their euphoria.

ESPN’s Alex Kirkland and Moises Llorens contributed to this report