How Barcelona’s high line was their key strength but became a big weakness.

Barcelona’s High Line: A Double-Edged Sword

Barcelona’s coach, Hansi Flick, has been at the center of a tactical storm, defending his team’s high defensive line with the assertion, “It looks dangerous, but it’s not dangerous.” This bold strategy became a hot topic in the football world, especially after Barça’s stunning 4-0 victory over their Clásico rivals, Real Madrid, at the Santiago Bernabéu. In that match, Barça’s high line was executed to perfection, catching Madrid offside 12 times, with Kylian Mbappé responsible for eight of those.

Following this triumph, Barça continued their winning streak by defeating Espanyol in the Catalan derby, marking 11 wins out of Flick’s first 12 LaLiga games. At that point, they were nine points clear of Real Madrid and ten ahead of Atlético Madrid, sitting comfortably at the top of the standings. They seemed unstoppable.

However, the tide turned dramatically. After securing 33 points from a possible 36, Barça managed to collect only five from the next 18, winning just once in their last six league games. This alarming dip in form was highlighted by a second consecutive home defeat in LaLiga, this time against Leganés.

The upcoming fixture against Atlético at the Olympic Stadium has now taken on heightened importance (stream LIVE at 3 p.m. ET on ESPN+ in the U.S.). The once comfortable 10-point gap between the two teams has vanished. Diego Simeone’s side, riding a wave of six straight wins in LaLiga, arrives in Barcelona level on points with the league leaders and with a game in hand.

The spotlight is now on Barça’s high line for all the wrong reasons. Has the strategy been exposed? Has the magic worn off? How have teams like Real Sociedad, Celta Vigo, Las Palmas, Real Betis, and Leganés managed to take points from them?

ESPN reached out to players and coaches from these teams to understand if Barça’s dip in form can be reversed or if Flick will need to adjust his tactics.

Dream Start

With the youngest squad in LaLiga, Barça started the season on a high note, winning their first seven league games. A defeat to Osasuna, following squad rotation by Flick, was quickly followed by another four-game winning streak in the league. They also dispatched Bayern Munich with a 4-1 win in the Champions League on Oct. 23.

Barça’s success was characterized by intensity, improved pressing, and winning the ball higher up the pitch. They were more direct, making fewer but more progressive passes, capitalizing on their players’ ability to exploit space.

The hallmark of the team quickly became the high line, with the back four pushing towards the halfway line whenever possible. For 12 games, it was executed almost flawlessly by Jules Koundé, Pau Cubarsí, Iñigo Martínez, and Alejandro Balde.

The offside trap became a talking point, especially after the Clásico. How would it fare against Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior? Remarkably well, it turned out, although the margins were fine, with one Mbappé goal ruled offside after a lengthy VAR review.

Flick commented on the tense moments when Mbappé or Vinícius ran in behind, noting that the only issue was the need for defenders to run back when the flag could go up earlier. “We always play with the back four very high,” he said. “Because the referees don’t whistle [for offside], it looks dangerous, but it’s not dangerous. The only thing is that everyone has to run back; this is the point I don’t like so much.”

The offside trap continued to work the following week, with two Espanyol goals ruled out after VAR reviews. Through 12 league games, Barça were catching teams offside an average of 6.92 times per game. At the time, Brighton & Hove Albion ranked second at 3.9 in Europe’s top five leagues. Barça’s previous highest per-game average was 3.16 in the 2022-23 season, with Villarreal holding the record at 5.55 in 2010-11.

“S— November”

The focus on Barça’s high line became so exaggerated that it dominated pregame and postmatch analysis. The element of surprise under a new coach had vanished, and teams began to devise plans to counter it. This started with Real Sociedad’s 1-0 win over Barça in San Sebastián early in November.

“We worked on their high line,” La Real forward Take Kubo told ESPN. “We saw the [5-2] Champions League game against Red Star Belgrade and the first goal they conceded. I personally had the impression that the key is the secondary runs from the midfielders.”

That loss was no anomaly. Barça then dropped points at Celta, giving up a two-goal lead to draw 2-2, and were beaten 2-1 at home by Las Palmas. The Canary Islanders had worked all week on beating Barça’s initial press and exploiting the space behind their back line using the pace of attackers like Sandro Ramírez and Fábio Silva.

“We had to take advantage of when we had the ball, push them back or try to push them back into their half, which is where we had said it was more difficult for them, and then take advantage of the chances we had,” Las Palmas midfielder José Campaña told ESPN. “When we had the opportunity to run in behind, we had chances.”

Defender Mika Mármol emphasized the importance of playing through Barça’s pressing. “Throughout the week, we worked on bringing the ball forward and breaking out [from the back] against the pressure they apply,” he told ESPN. “With their style of play, with the line really high, we wanted to take advantage of that and we were able to.”

These results led Flick to express relief that “s— November is now over,” but performances have not markedly improved since. After beating Mallorca 5-1, they twice led against Real Betis before drawing 2-2, and then lost 1-0 at home to Leganés. Once again, teams targeted their high line. Mallorca’s goal came via a deep run from full-back Pablo Maffeo, who caught Barça’s backline flat-footed.

“Barcelona’s defensive line as high as the halfway line is risky,” Betis coach Manuel Pellegrini told ESPN. “They have created and conceded a lot of chances, with the high line snuffing out a lot of openings when it’s done well. For me, it’s a huge difference between the [back four] and the goalkeeper, but it’s getting results so far because they’re still going well in LaLiga and the Champions League.”

Pellegrini added, “More than anything, [getting behind] it depends on the technical quality to be able to find those passes in between the defence and the goalkeeper. That’s how to attack such a high line.”

“Of course players, like Isco and [Giovani] Lo Celso, to name the creators at Betis, are players that can make the difference. They see the space and have to calculate the timing of the pass just right. That’s talent, so rather than telling them how to play a pass, it’s about preparing the plays and the movement of their teammates so they can find those passes.”

High Line to Blame, or Low Energy?

There have been glimmers of hope amid the bad results. Barça have remained strong in the Champions League, beating the previously unbeaten Brest 3-0 and then becoming the first team to triumph at Borussia Dortmund this season, winning 3-2. The 5-1 win at Mallorca also showed that even if teams do deploy deep runners, and even if they do score a goal from it, it can still be hard to stop Barça when they click in attack.

“The idea was clear, but it’s not easy because the temptation is there to run away from your marker and it’s difficult not to fall into the offside trap,” Mallorca coach Jagoba Arrasate told ESPN. “We did well with the goal we scored, but not so well on other occasions.”

Mallorca midfielder Sergi Darder added: “If Barça play with that line, there’s a reason for it. It’s complicated [to break down]. It’s easy to know what you have to do against a defence like that, but hard to actually do it.”

“They encourage you to [play the ball in behind] and you’re always offside. We knew never to give the pass on the back of the first movement. The problem is they press you, too, and you have to play the ball and if the timing is off, it’s offside.”

Sources at Barça did not want to reduce their poor run of form to the idea the high line has been found out, either, even as the number of times they catch teams offside per game has slipped from 6.92 to 5.83 in the space of six games. They say there are other factors. Flick, in addition to saying his young side will experience ups and downs, has highlighted the fact the team must defend as a whole. He has spoken about a “disconnect” between the attack and defence, the implication that a decrease in the intensity of the pressing has made it easier for opposition teams to attack Barça’s backline.

There have also been games without star winger Lamine Yamal. Barça have not won any of the four league fixtures which he hasn’t started this season. He missed matches with an ankle injury in November and is now out again for another four weeks with a similar problem. Robert Lewandowski’s form in front of goal has dropped off, too. Despite scoring 23 goals in 23 games this season, the 36-year-old striker has just one in his last four and missed good chances against Leganés, when he registered six shots with an accumulated xG of over 1.6.

The team’s mental and physical freshness has also been questioned. Barça have been dependent on the same core of players and there has been little rotation. There is a lack of depth. Ten players have played over 1,500 minutes already this season in all competitions. Dani Olmo, limited by injuries, ranks 11th with 787 minutes and no one else has played more than 700 minutes in the squad.

It was a surprise, then, that only one change, Eric García for Cubarsí, was made against Leganés following the win in Dortmund. Flick’s assistant coach Marcus Sorg later suggested, for the first time, that perhaps there was a tiredness element to Barça’s performances.

“The last weeks were very hard but the data before the game was good,” Sorg said in a news conference after the Leganés defeat. “It was the reason why we kept a lot of players from Dortmund on the pitch. But after the game, sometimes you know more than before.”

Barça are still well placed, top of LaLiga and second in the Champions League standings. But with the winter break looming, Saturday’s year-ending game against Atlético feels huge. Lose and they would slip three points behind having played a game more, all that good work earlier in the season unravelling. Maybe there is some danger after all.

ESPN’s Gemma Soler and Moises Llorens contributed to this report