The arrival of Hansi Flick to the FC Barcelona bench has brought with it a revolution in the club’s technical staff. The German coach will have Marcus Sorg and Heiko Westermann as assistants, whom he knows from his time as ‘Die Mannschaft’ coach. He will also have Toni Tapalovic as goalkeeper coach. In addition, Barça hired Julio Tous, who will be the new physical trainer, and Raúl Martínez, physiotherapist, will be the new leader in this area.
However, in the entity there are ‘survivors’ of Xavi Hernández’s era. One of them is José Ramón de la Fuente, goalkeeping coach for the Barça squad since his arrival more than ten years ago.. The coach landed at the Camp Nou in 2012, in the last seasons of Víctor Valdés wearing Barça.
The continuity of De la Fuente is the express request of Marc-André Ter Stegen. The Barcelona goalkeeper wanted to continue working with the coach and the Catalan entity gave him the go-ahead despite the fact that Flick brought in his own assistants. With the help of José Ramón, the German goalkeeper won the Zamora 2022-2023 team and was able to achieve it again this season.
Two specialists for Flick
In this way, Hansi Flick will have two specialists in the area on his staff. He knows Tapalovic from his time at Bayern Munich and from having acted as a goalkeeping coach in Schalke 04’s youth football team. A great friend of Neuer, Toni was also under the orders of Guardiola and Ancelotti, and now he will coincide with De la Fuente at Can Barça.
