Hansi Flick’s rotation policy at Barcelona has come into scrutiny this week after Rodri suffered a hamstring injury against Aston Villa, which ruled him out of the massive La Liga clash against Altético Madrid on Sunday.
Rodri has played a lot of minutes since the international break and has rarely been rotated out of the side or substituted during matches, and the full 90 minutes played in a very comfortable 6-1 win against Alavés just three days before the clash with Villa caused plenty of criticism
of Flick’s handling of the midfielder’s minutes.
The coach was asked about the issue at a press conference on Saturday and defended his decision, explaining that he agreed a plan for Rodri’s minutes with the player ahead of time.
“You can always do things better, but in this case I spoke with the player and we managed his minutes. He’s an experienced player and we talked. We agreed on these things. I can’t do more. When you see the results, you think you could have done things differently, but that’s in the past now.”
This is one of those rare times when I completely disagree with Flick. Rodri’s minutes were not well managed recently, and speaking to a player and getting his green light to play isn’t always the best thing. Players always want to play, and sometimes they must be protected from themselves.
To Flick’s credit, Pedri and Raphinha’s minutes have been managed much better this season and the coach has been very careful to rotate and substitute them as early and as often as possible. But other stars, such as Rodri and Lamine Yamal, simply play too much.
