Rise of a Football God

Standing over the ball, the Brazilian oozed confidence.

FWEEE!

And immediately after the referee's whistle sounded, without any fancy feints or tricks, he ran directly to the ball and hit it with power, sending it on a trajectory towards the bottom right corner.

Thud!

Lopes, the Brest goalkeeper dived the right way, almost arriving on time to tip the ball away but Raphinha's shot contained speed and power and that became the facet that let it beat the goalkeeper.

The ball nestled into the bottom right corner, and the net rippled.

"GOALLLL…!"

The FC Barcelona fans roared, celebrating the goal even as they already temporarily removed the unfortunate situation of the Polish striker from their minds.

Charging towards the corner flag, Raphinha jumped high and pumped a fist in celebration, eliciting loud cheers from the home fans.

In the 26th minute of this game, FC Barcelona finally broke the deadlock, scoring the first goal of the game but at the moment, they were with just 10 men on the pitch with Lewandowski's enforced absence.

Hansi Flick already made a change at the byline by the time that Raphinha was done celebrating his goal.

The officials raised the substitution board, announcing the substitution.

(No. 9- Out)

(No. 6- In)

With Robert Lewandowski out of the game, Hansi Flick did not bring in a makeshift striker like most people expected in Ferran Torres, rather, he brought in a midfielder, Pablo Gavi instead.

Before Gavi entered the pitch, the German coach gave him instructions.

Entering the pitch, the first thing that Gavi did was to jog towards Sam's position before whispering a few words to him.

Quickly, he left, focusing on his other teammates and telling them the instructions from their coach.

Sam was stunned. 'Really?'

Incredulously, Hansi Flick made the decision of playing Sam in the false 9 position again for the second time this season!

Yes, during his first 2 games this season, he struggled to impact the team positively in attack as he failed to register a goal or an assist.

Yes, his first attacking masterpiece in an FC Barcelona jersey came from when Sam was suddenly instructed to play as a false 9 by his coach, resulting in his 2-goal plundering display that robbed Real Sociedad of 2 important points.

But despite that, Sam was still an attacking midfielder by profession.

FC Barcelona bought him because of his crazy performances for Fulham from the attacking midfield position.

Sam struggled at first to make an impact in Barcelona, but he already deduced that it was because he needed to adapt to playing for his new team. And he believed that with time, he would adapt. Continue reading at My Virtual Library Empire

To think that his coach had other ideas for him.

'This…,' Sam did not know what to think but in the end, trust his mentality, he ignored the negatives of this situation and decided to focus on the positives.

'If the coach says I should play as the striker, why now?'

'Afterall, that way, I'm closer to the goal'.

Hansi Flick didn't just make a single positional change in this game, the Catalan coach literally switched things up, changing the formation of his team.

From the 4-2-3-1 formation where FC Barcelona started in, Hansi Flick changed his team's shape into a 4-3-3 formation to accommodate a proper false 9, a formation that was extremely familiar to FC Barcelona fans.

Afterall, this was the same formation that a prime Pep Guardiola-led Barcelona used predominantly in the season where the great Lionel Messi went on to smash all goalscoring records, scoring 91 goals in a single calendar year!

In Pep Guardiola's magic wand, it was effective but could the same be said about the German coach in Hansi Flick?

Was Hansi Flick as tactically good as Pep Guardiola?

Could Sam even hope to replicate half of what Lionel Messi did?

No one knew the answer to these questions, the answers would slowly reveal themselves first as this game progressed.

FWEEEE!

The referee's whistle sounded to continue the game and that was when like a Dragon that finally woke up from its slumber, Brest arose.

It was no news that since the inception of Hansi Flick's reign at FC Barcelona, his teams predominately played in a 4-2-3-1 formation utilizing their offside traps to catch opponents off-guard.

Hansi Flick experimenting in the Spanish La Liga would have been a different case, but this was the UEFA Champions League.

A tournament filled with Crouching Tigers and Hidden Dragons.@@novelbin@@

As soon as Hansi Flick made the formational change, the Brest coach sensed weakness. The FC Barcelona players were all talented and would adapt after some time but before that, they would struggle to play fluid football in the changed formation.

Pouncing on this deduction, the Brest coach gave his players only a single order; attack!

Bam!

After just conceding a goal, Brest restarted the game from the half-way line and immediately, hordes of their players poured outward, attacking the Barcelona half as the Catalans were briefly caught off-guard.

But alert, they all reacted, trying to track back and defend valiantly but Brest was like a Great White Shark who already set eyes on its prey.

Nothing in this world could stop them from sinking their teeth on their prey.

1 pass, 2 pass, 3 pass…

After the initial pass to kickstart the game again, from the right to the left, 3 additional passes were all it took to cut FC Barcelona open like a hot knife through butter, setting the Nigerian International, Moses Simon up.

He only had Jules Kounde to beat.

A rapid stepover, a body feint and an explosion of speed and Jules Kounde was left chasing shadows as Moses Simon blitzed past him.

Going past Kounde, he came one-on-one with the Barcelona goalkeeper and just as Ronaldo Araujo charged out, about to intercept him, he shot the ball.

Bam!

Hitting it perfectly with his right foot, he sent it across the face of goal, curling it towards the top right corner.

FC Barcelona's Polish goalkeeper dived but the ball just about curled past his grasp, nestling into the top right corner of the net.

"GOALLLLLL!!!" The away stands erupted immediately as the Brest supporters jumped, screaming, and cheering at the top of their lungs.

Moses Simon charged towards the corner flag, sliding on his knees in celebration even as FC Barcelona remained stunned.

"My God! What a lightning-fast goal!"

"26 minutes, Barcelona scores; 27 minutes, Brest equalizes!"

"This Sam-striker strategy leaves Barcelona open after all, I doubt this formation is going to work".

"Hansi Flick is playing with fire".