La Liga belongs to Barcelona again. Here’s how they did the double | Sid Lowe

Way after midnight and visiting hours had long since finished but they had only just got started and they weren’t going to leave the patient with appendicitis lying there alone, not at a time like this. So Pedri González, Dani Olmo, Iñigo Martínez and Eric García rented four city bikes and cycled up Avinguda Diagonal in the dark. They had been out to Cornella and come back with the league, double done. They had gone to the training ground at Sant Joan Despí, belting through Bad Moon Rising from the balcony with the fans below. Now they were heading to the hospital to share the moment with Ferran Torres, recently out of emergency surgery and watching from the ward as he became a champion like them.

At the end of the game that finally won the title, a campaign concluded with victories over Real Madrid first and Espanyol four days later, just about as good as it gets, the first thing Hansi Flick was asked was what he was most proud of. “Pfff,” the coach replied. “I don’t think we have time for this …” There was so much, which is why there was a long pause before he finally said: “The most important thing is you feel like a family. The atmosphere in the dressing room is so great; I’ve never seen this before. They really take care of each other.” And which was why when he was asked whose league this was – Lamine Yamal’s? His – he replied: “Barcelona’s. This is not about one guy.”

Lamine Yamal had scored the extraordinary goal that set it all up, another strike so very his. Nobody had played the way Pedri had. And Raphinha had been involved in 59 goals across all competitions, a captain recovered for the cause. But cause is the word: this was about all of them. Think about this season and every playerwas better than before; together they had been better than anyone else, and a lot more fun. When Fermín López scored the second on Thursday, La Liga won with two games left, it was Barcelona’s 97th league goal, their 169th overall, no one near them. Eight were against Real Madrid, and that’s just the league; there were eight more across the Super Cup and the Copa del Rey.

By then, Barcelona winning the league had come to feel natural, inevitable, right, but it wasn’t always so. This season didn’t have to end with Wojciech Szczesny smoking a fat cigar, at least not in the Cornellà dressing room; it had started without him being a footballer at all. It didn’t need to end with Marc Casadó on the shoulders of supporters at Canaletes, traditional gathering point for cule celebrations, and had he gone 10 months ago no one would have noticed. It didn’t have to end with Alex Balde bare-chested and hanging out of the sunroof, singing. Or with Joan Laporta in Luz de Gas, or perhaps it did. But the rest wasn’t supposed to happen.

Madrid had added Kylian Mbappé to a team that had just won the league and European Cup. Atlético Madrid had spent more than anyone. Barcelona, well behind last season, had signed Olmo, it is true, but couldn’t register him yet. And the player that they had most pursued had escaped them, so they had to settle for the best instead. They had seen their coach Xavi Hernández renew his contract in September, resign in January, be convinced to continue in April and get sacked in May. But now they had Hansi Flick, who had a plan plus the personality to put it into place.

Hansi Flick keeps the intensity up against Espanyol. Photograph: Albert Gea/Reuters

There was a change of culture and atmosphere, a seriousness worn lightly. Jules Koundé sat out games against Espanyol and Alavés, punished for being a few minutes late, and didn’t do it again. Iñaki Peña lost his place entirely for the same reason, or at least that was the initial excuse. There was a change in the physical preparation. There was a change on the touchline and the press room too, a calmness about a coach not drawn into all the noise, not once complaining, even when Olmo was unavailable. Above all there was a change in idea and the conviction to see it through.

Barcelona were going on the attack with everything they had. Especially their guts: never mind sticking your head in where the boots fly, this is bravery. Fun too, if you get it right. If there is a stat that defines the season, perhaps it is that Barcelona have caught opponents offside 289 times; no one in Europe is even within a hundred of them. Their opponents have had 38 goals ruled out for offside. The margins may have been fine, it may feel like a risk and some players’ subconscious may be screaming “Don’t do it!”, but it is not luck; it is a plan, precision executed, and life has been good lived on the edge.

“There were doubts because it was different but we can see the results now,” Flick said. “Dropping back doesn’t help us. The key point is to get pressure on the ball. We train this. The first player starts the dynamic to press and then the next one goes. We want that the opponent cannot pass clearly. Maybe not the first, not the second; maybe the third player gets the ball. That is what we train and everyone is included.”

There’s something of the fearless of youth in that, embraced by the coach and expressed of course by Lamine Yamal – and something very special is happening with the 17-year-old, the player Simone Inzaghi said that “is born every 50 years”. “When you see the babies they always want to learn, want to learn: it is in our DNA and this is what I want from the players,” Flick said. “They have this hunger and that for me is crucial.” On the opening day of the season, Barcelona had three 17-year-olds in their starting XI. On the day they won the title, nine academy products played. They had the youngest average age in La Liga.

But it is is not just them and at the other end of the spectrum was Robert Lewandowski. Xavi had not been keen on keeping him – a significant factor in the decision to change coach – but Flick put him back in the area, and if some doubts remain, Torres an able sometimes even superior replacement, the Pole set off towards a 40-goal season. When he was asked in those opening months what he had done, Flick said this was just the Robert he had always known. When Marc-André ter Stegen injured his knee, Lewandowski called Szczesny and convinced him to come out of retirement; now he is a double winner.

Barcelona fans celebrate in the street after winning the title. Photograph: Emilio Morenatti/AP

Another veterans have been vital, Martínez especially alongside Pau Cubarsí. Koundé too. By the final months Frenkie de Jong became what Frenkie de Jong had always been supposed to be. Raphinha felt important and responded with the season of his life. Pedri’s centrality to everything spoke of talent but also the shift in the physical preparation, Flick publicly thanking sporting director Deco for bringing in new medical and fitness staff. Pedri moved to a deeper place on the pitch, controlling everything; just as important was that he was on the pitch at all. Still only 22, the man who missed 75 games over the previous three years started his 33rd league game at Espanyol. No one has covered more kilometres or recovered more balls.

The change has been good for all of them. “We needed that fresh air,” Lamine Yamal said. Yet even the optimistic, and Laporta is always optimistic (and, it should be added, often right), couldn’t have imagined things would change quite this much. Flick told his players that the start was vital: they had to get points on the board while Real Madrid adapted to Mbappé. They won every match until the first clásico, and that night they beat Madrid 4-0; they also caught them offside 12 times, which was a statement of intent, the season set up.

Barcelona though lost their captain and goalkeeper. Then came what the coach called “shit November”, which was about right, except that it took in December too, just six points earned from 24 and the advantage lost. They would find themselves seven points behind Madrid and trailing Atlético too. In the last game of 2024, they dominated Diego Simeone’s side but lost 2-1 at Montjuïc, shot down by the hitman. It was their third consecutive defeat at home, after Leganés and Las Palmas, two of the bottom three.

It didn’t happen again anywhere in Spain, not even when they came back from that defeat in Milan and went two down to Madrid, title race back on. So much for being found out, so much for fear. They might have crumbled, a normal team probably would have done; instead, they produced their 10th comeback and scored four in less than half an hour, taking Madrid apart so completely you could be forgiven for thinking that had let the first two in just for the fun of it. For 24 minutes, Madrid didn’t get out of their half. Yes, literally. Then on Thursday night, Szczesny and Lamine Yamal took them to another victory. They had done it.

In an eight-week period in the middle of the season, Barcelona had won just one but either side of that, their record reads: 29 wins, one draw, one loss, one super cup, one Copa del Rey and one league title. “When I see the people and they are happy and they are smiling, for me it is the greatest thing. It’s time to celebrate,” Flick said on Thursday night and that meant all of them, four bikes heading up the diagonal in the small hours with champions on board.