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Sam Marsden, Barcelona correspondent
Barcelona forward Raphinha has told ESPN that fatigue is the major reason for the team’s dip in form as they target a winning end to the year in Saturday’s top of the table clash against Atlético Madrid (stream LIVE at 3 p.m. ET on ESPN+ in the U.S.).
Barça won 11 of their first 12 LaLiga games this season but have won just one of six since, suffering surprise back-to-back home league defeats to Las Palmas and Leganés.
Atlético, meanwhile, have won six in a row in LaLiga and go into the game at the Olympic Stadium level on points with leaders Barça having been 10 points behind at the start of November.
“It’s down to us,” Raphinha told ESPN when asked about recent poor results. “We have been bad. We have dropped our level. Maybe we have lacked concentration in moments and it’s cost us.
“And tiredness as well. If I tell you we weren’t tired in certain games when we dropped points, I would be lying. So tiredness I think is the biggest factor, but we have also dropped our level.”
Barça’s short squad and injuries have meant coach Hansi Flick has been reliant on the same core of players since taking over in the summer.
Raphinha is one of 10 players to have already clocked up over 1,500 minutes this season. Dani Olmo, limited by injuries, is 11th with 787 minutes and no one else has played more than 700 minutes in the squad.
Only Iñigo Martínez (2,046 minutes) and Jules Koundé (1,975) — who was this week revealed as the footballer who has played the most minutes across the whole of 2024 — have played more than Raphinha.
Despite that, the Brazilian backs Barça to come through this difficult patch and has said if they can sharpen the focus on every match — like they did in wins against Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund — they can get back on track.
“Yes, [we will] come through this,” he added. “I have a tattoo that says that ‘Everything passes,’ meaning the bad moments pass and the good ones, too, so it’s going to pass.
“We are doing good, we had a good moment [at the start of the season], entered a bad moment, and that will pass. That’s life. It’s how football is and life is also the same.
“What I think is we have to approach every game, every team, like the most powerful team in the world. If we did that, I think we would be much more focused, to defend together, attack together and more focused to score goals.
“If we go into every game thinking it is the most important, we will be better.”
Defender Koundé agrees with Raphinha that Barça have risen to the big occasions. The French international hopes the weekend’s visit from Atlético will provide the platform to do so again.
“It’s a little bit of everything,” Koundé told ESPN when asked to diagnose Barça’s problems. “We are just playing a little less good in every aspect of the game.
“We start with the pressure [not being as good], it’s also the focus, technically we are losing too many balls, especially in LaLiga because we’ve been doing good in the Champions League.
“I would say it’s us most of the time. I give credit to the team who beat us or draw against us, but in every game we had the chance to win it and we just didn’t play good enough or score our chances. It’s up to us to rectify it.
“We like these games [against teams like Atlético]. We’ve done great in these games, let’s say the big games, so far this season.”
Atlético have won 11 matches in a row in all competitions and moved level with Barça at the top of LaLiga last week while still having a game in hand going into Saturday’s meeting, which is the last game of 2024 before the Spanish league stops for a winter break.
“They are a contender [to win the league] for sure,” Koundé added. “They have been good enough so far this season. They are sitting first in the table with us.
“I don’t know if they have the strongest squad, but I think this season they have more depth and a more complete team. We have been watching, obviously, and I think they’re playing great.”