Hansi Flick addresses captaincy role at Barcelona after latest controversy

Barcelona have failed to keep up with their good form with the Catalonia side losing at home to Las Palmas last weekend.

In what was a surprising defeat, Barcelona suffered a huge blow in their pursuit for success and some incidents occurred during the match that raised eyebrows.

During the match, opposite to what has been the custom for the last few weeks, Raphinha did not hand over the captain’s armband to Frenkie de Jong when the Dutchman made his way to the pitch from the bench in the second half.

This incident sparked huge reactions from fans as many believed De Jong has lost his respect in the team and he’s not considered as a leader.

Brazilian forward  (Photo by Josep LAGO / AFP) (Photo by JOSEP LAGO/AFP via Getty Images)

However, speaking ahead of Barca clash with Mallorca, Flick was surprised to get a question on this matter, but downplayed its importance and made it clear that there has been no change in the team’s captaincy order:

“There have been no changes in the captaincy, and I’m not aware of any changes within the team. On the field, I didn’t notice anything. In Germany, we don’t do the thing where we pass the captain’s armband around on the field; that’s something done here, and I don’t know why they didn’t do it.”

Marc Andre ter Stegen, Ronald Araujo, Frenkie de Jong, Raphinha, and Pedri were elected by the team as the captains at the start of this season, but due to the absence of the first three, Raphinha has been the team’s captain for most part of the season.

But with Frenkie’s return, he will be the first in line to get the armband whenever he is on the pitch.

But it is easy to reason that the team was struggling to get a result against Las Palmas when Frenkie got on the pitch in the last game, and changing the armband would not have been the first thing on the players’ minds, and thus, that event did not reflect any change in the team roles.