Barcelona and Hansi Flick herald the beginning of a brave new era

There was a sense that it was a victory that could be considered year zero the next time Barcelona celebrate a sustained run of success.

“This kind of game will never be forgotten,” said Raphinha, Barcelona captain and hat-trick hero. It wasn't just about winning 4-1 in the Champions League against strong opponents, but also about how it worked out, who did it and who was defeated.

In the first half in particular, Barcelona deployed a comedically aggressive defensive line that was reminiscent of the Dutch team Johan Cruyff played in 50 years ago, not to mention the Barca team he coached 30 years ago.

Barca claimed victory with a total of nine players from La Masia – admittedly, if you include the returning Dani Olmo, the only major signing of the summer. And it was against Bayern Munich, the club that Pep Guardiola practically defected to, the club that has such a strong record against Barca, the club that humiliated them 8-2 four years ago.

Barcelona only repaid 50 percent of the loss, but that was enough to spark real celebrations in the stands. This will certainly be remembered as their most significant victory during this temporary stay at the Olympic Stadium at Montjuic.

It was often said that the challenge of facing Barcelona at the Camp Nou was the famous “big pitch”. But that was something of a fallacy; The range of pitch sizes permitted for UEFA competitions is quite narrow and the 'large pitch' was primarily an optical illusion. The Camp Nou was so huge and the camera angle was therefore so vertical that the pitch appeared much larger on television. More relevantly, Barcelona played with the opponent in terms of geometry, extending play with the ball and leaving space behind without the ball.

The Olympic Stadium gives a different kind of illusion. A converted athletics stadium means there is a yawning gap of about 50 meters between the goal and the closest fans behind it. And as if to underscore how far away the fans are from the action, there are often no outfielders in the entire half of the field. Barcelona have long played with a high defensive line, but this season they are taking it to new extremes.

Given the identity of her manager, that's not a big surprise. Hansi Flick led Bayern in that 8-2 win and subsequent European Cup success, and the positioning of that team's backline felt revolutionary in this modern era with its liberal interpretation of the offside law. Flick's Bayern seemed to open themselves up to even the simplest attacks at times, but they played with enough unity to reach forward at the right moment and cover the space.

In a way, what Flick is doing with Barcelona is even bolder, with less experienced defenders and Inaki Pena, something of a newcomer, in goal. But the philosophy remains clear, as Raphinha summarizes it. “We knew the further we could get from our goal, the better for us,” he explained.

Statistics from the five major European leagues this season show that Barcelona are playing almost a different game to everyone else. Not only do they catch the opponent offside significantly more often than all of the other 95 teams, but they are also close to the top when it comes to through balls played behind the opponent. In other words: Barcelona allows space at the back on one side and exploits the space at the back on the other side.

To underline the risk of such a style of play, Bayern are the only team that have played more through balls than they have this season.

But Barcelona didn't compromise and the defenders pushed so far that at times they were practically on top of the two central midfielders, almost in a 6-0-4 shape…

The game was effectively summed up within the first minute. After 20 seconds, Barcelona's defensive line tightened up and flagged several Bayern players offside – they would have pointed this out in their video analysis, but still seemed surprised at the level of aggression when they encountered it.

This led to a long ball from Manuel Neuer to nobody and a loss of possession. Barcelona then quickly attacked and broke into the deficit, releasing Raphinha.

The player closest to Raphinha was central midfielder Joshua Kimmich, who demonstrated Bayern's man marking. The defensive line itself was even further away.

Raphinha became a star, scoring a hat-trick while wearing the captain's armband. For his second goal, he shot inside and finished, and his hat-trick goal was a combination of the previous two.

But it was that opening goal that most succinctly summed up Raphinha's role this season; Although he sometimes operates on the touchline, he thrives in a central role as a No. 10, leaving Robert Lewandowski behind him.

“I have never had a player like Raphinha because he is incredibly dynamic with and without the ball,” said Flick. “His speed is fantastic. Every single team needs this type of player.”

The timing of his runs has proven to be so effective, partly because he starts them from deep. And this was the perfect game for a player with that ability.

Not to mention the goals, look at this situation towards the end of the first half when the game was so compressed by two high defensive lines that Raphinha was both central defenders…

… and then a center forward within four seconds because there was only about 25 yards between the two positions.

Raphinha is one of only three non-Spanish players who took part, alongside Lewandowski and right-back Jules Kounde. A curious element of Flick's change from Barca is that he speaks neither Spanish nor Catalan and therefore conducts training sessions in English – which several members of Barca's first team admit they do not fully understand.

Perhaps this shows that the language barrier is not a problem because Flick and his players have the same natural understanding of football.

This appears to be a truly talented La Masia generation. Pau Cubarsi is 17 and outstanding. Holding midfielder Marc Casado, 21, reads the game beautifully. Fermin Lopez is also 21 years old and sets smart times on his runs. Pedri and the returning Gavi, 21 and 20 respectively, almost feel like the team's veterans. And in this form it is impossible not to think of Lamine Yamal and think of Lionel Messi, who at 17 years old was not yet at this level.

This inevitably raises the question of how good Jamal will be and how good this FC Barcelona will be.

But who cares right now? Yamal will inevitably suffer setbacks and Barca will play that risky brand of football too, but that in itself was cause for celebration: a convincing victory with aggressive football from a group of young academy products and therefore surely the purest Barca victory since the days of Guardiola.