As Spanish football becomes increasingly global, the linguistic crossovers between Spanish and English have multiplied and conquered when it comes to talking about the game. However specifically Barcelona context, few good translations have been found for ‘entorno’, nor has it quite entered the common lexicon. The environment seems to be the closest that anyone has come to describe what essentially encompasses, the media, the whispers from the very innards of club, and the influence of those at its summit.
Never before has it come under such intense focus as last year during the final months of Xavi Hernandez’s tenure as manager. The legendary midfielder, adored as a player, declared that his time as coach has included some of the worst days of his life. “There are many moments when it doesn’t pay to be a Barca coach,” Xavi explained, among other adjectives such as cruel, unjust and exhausting.
This year, it’s a word that has rarely come up though, and while that is in no small part down to results, the chasm in the press room atmosphere from twelve months prior is hard not to notice. Part of the theory is that Hansi Flick’s lack of Spanish or Catalan has been the most effective wall between him and the pressures applied by the entorno. Questions of philosophical purity are no longer on the agenda.
“This year I think Flick has been very protected this season, and the entorno has been pretty good to him. It’s true that the results have been good as well,” explains Albert Ferrer, part of the Barcelona dream team under Johan Cruyff in the 1990s.
Ferrer has had three stints as a manager himself, authoring an historic promotion campaign at Cordoba in 2014, as well as spells with Vitesse Arnhem in the Netherlands and RCD Mallorca. Having spent the majority of his career at Barcelona, few have a better insight into what exactly it is like to experience the mythical beast itself.
“It is difficult, because as a manager, you are the first one who suffers from everything that is happening. The pressure at Barcelona is huge, and if you don’t win every single game, even if you draw, the press are immediately asking what is happening. That’s the impact it has on the manager.”
Flick: “I think we played two great games against Atlético Madrid, and we have to be focused from the beginning to the end. At the end of the first game we were not as focused as we wanted. In the second game it happened to us both at the beginning and at the end.”
— barcacentre (@barcacentre) March 15, 2025
“But if you’re coaching any other team, the pressure is the same,” Ferrer points out. “It’s true that in other teams, it’s not winning every game, the pressure grows as a consequence of a run of bad results, but as a manager, you feel it, it’s always there. It’s part of the job, as a manager, how you deal with, it’s difficult.”
The impact of that pressure was written across Xavi’s face and powerful in his words last year, and even if some are less vocal about it, that does not mean to say they too are ‘suffering’, as the Spanglish goes. Understanding it and handling it are two entirely different tasks.
“When I was managing, it affected me when we didn’t get a good result. You don’t feel like going out with the family. There are managers that are more able to cope with that, but I think it’s the same anywhere you go. The pressure is always there.”
‘Of course’, Xavi responded when asked whether the entorno could impact player performance in December of 2023, almost confused by the question. There is an extra degree of separation between the manager’s office and the dressing room says Ferrer though.
“I think as a player, you are not so vulnerable to the toxic aspect of the entorno. You just basically do what your manager tells you to do, and the moment that results go badly, it’s the manager that takes the blame.”
“So at the moment the pressure gets to the player, it has already been written about the manager this and that, so I think the players are OK. They just do as they are told, and they are excused from it. The main responsibility and the one who has to deal with the entorno is the manager.”
Balde: “We are very young. Often people don’t realize what we are doing, many of us are 17, 18 or 19 years old. People are a little accustomed to it, and think that Lamine’s thing is normal. That’s not normal.”
— barcacentre (@barcacentre) March 15, 2025
What fans and media struggle to assimilate most about top-level football is the intensity of the game though.
“I think one of the things that we normalise in football is how difficult it is, how physical it is, how demanding,” says the 54-year-old, looking up, his mind feeling the blows. “You look on TV, and see players being kicked and knocks and sprinting, running, misses passes. It is very, very difficult. You cannot make a mistake. This is probably the most difficult thing at the top level of football.”
Perhaps if that was communicated better, the unrelenting dissection of the game would be a little more forgiving.
“Players normalise the situation, they can deal with it, but it’s one of the first things you notice when you put yourself in a high level game. You find out how difficult it is, how intense it is. For us, as players or coaches, the most difficult is to show that, that mistakes are part of the game, and you shouldn’t necessarily be judged on that.”
“But that comes with the job too.” The words of a player, manager and now analyst who has seen the production from every angle.
Watch Atlético de Madrid vs Barcelona on Sunday 16th March at 8pm on LALIGATV and ITV4. Showing ‘All of LALIGA, All in one place’, LALIGATV is available exclusively in the UK via Premier Sports, from just £7.99/month.
