Before his upcoming official debut next weekend, Barcelona's new head coach Hans Dieter Fricker accepted an interview with Barcelona's official media outlet BarcelonaOne, the first time he has publicly expressed his views and expectations of the team since taking office. In the interview, Flick was full of love and longing for Barcelona and full of confidence in the team's future.
Frick began by talking about his feelings when he first arrived at Barcelona: "From the first day, I was deeply impressed by the passion of the people here. Whether it's the fans, the president or everyone who works for Barça, they are all full of love and dedication to this club. This atmosphere is a great motivation for us, because we also aspire to be part of this family and live with this passion."
Frick spoke highly of Barcelona's soccer tradition and youth training system: "Barcelona's soccer has always been what I aspire to. The soccer they play is not only fantastic, but more importantly, how they develop generations of great players. The success of the La Masia training camp is remarkable and I'm very grateful to them for sending so many talented young players to the team. In the first training session I saw the extraordinary potential of these young players and their quality is truly outstanding."
Frick also revealed how his soccer philosophy fits with Barcelona's: "My soccer philosophy is similar to Barcelona's, which is what I have been pursuing since my first team coaching. I am deeply influenced by the Dutch soccer school and Cruyff's philosophy, which focuses on possession, offense and teamwork. I believe these philosophies will be further developed at Barcelona."
Speaking about the team's future plans, Frick said, "We always want to maintain a proactive stance, both in possession and without the ball. We want to win games by guiding our opponents into our rhythm through clever tactics and good performances from our players. Of course, we understand that we will face various pressures and challenges during the game, but we will be at our best to deal with them."
In addition, Frick spoke about his relationship with assistant coach Deco: "I have a very good working relationship with Deco. He's doing a great job and I'm very happy with that. We are both working hard to improve the overall quality of the team. We need to bring in good players who can win matches to strengthen our strength, and we also need to cultivate young players to help them grow quickly."
Finally, Frick expressed his expectations for the future, "I don't know how far we can go, but what I can guarantee is that we will do our best to achieve our goals. We hope to take Barcelona to new heights making the fans proud of us."
