A familiar face returned to FC Barcelona last summer as the former midfielder Thiago Alcantara came to the club as an external collaborator for Flick’s coaching staff. However, his stay at the Blaugrana club was rather short-lived, as he left the team only a few weeks later.
Currently, the former Bayern Munich and Liverpool midfielder is back in the United Kingdom, where he had to return for tax reasons. But his association with Barcelona might not yet have ended for good.
According to Mundo Deportivo, Hansi Flick is already planning to have him back on his coaching staff in January. When he returns from the United Kingdom, he will be a full-fledged member of the coaching staff, and Barcelona will announce it publicly without any problems.
Even now, the former midfielder is connected with Flick’s staff through a video link and follows the day-to-day affairs of the Catalan club very closely. He even regularly meets members of the staff remotely and has also been influential in making some decisions.
Furthermore, he also tried to play a role in the club’s pursuit of Stefan Bajcetic, one of his former Liverpool teammates whom he tried to convince to move to Barcelona when Marc Bernal got injured. However, Barcelona’s FFP problems kept this operation from being completed, and he ended up joining Salzburg.
Thiago had retired from professional football only at the end of the last season, and wasted little time in finding another exciting project to work on. Flick had asked him to be a part of his squad, after the two had worked together during Flick’s time at Bayern Munich, and Thiago was an important member of his sextuple-winning squad.
At that time, Thiago had accepted Flick’s offer with the condition of starting officially only in January 2025, as in 2024 he was still a taxpayer in the United Kingdom as a Liverpool player.