Espanyol Vs Barcelona [0–2] – La Liga 2025/2026: How Barça Survived The Derbi Barceloní – Tactical Analysis

The Derbi Barceloní has been a very emotional game for many years, delivering many highlights and scandals, such as Espanyol fans running onto the pitch to stop Barcelona from celebrating their league title a couple of years back.

While the emotional value was always there, the game was rather insignificant on the actual sporting side.

While Espanyol have always been a tough team to play against, the second biggest club from the Catalan capital has failed to win the derby in La Liga since February 2009, so just about 13 years ago.

This year, things could be different, though.

Under Manolo González, Espanyol are having a stellar season, currently in fifth place in the table and with a realistic chance of qualifying for the UEFA Champions League.

On the other side, Barcelona are leading La Liga, and with Real Madrid struggling over the last couple of weeks, the Blaugrana are currently the favourites to become Spanish champions again this term.

The derby against Espanyol proved harder than they had imagined before the game started.

The home team defended incredibly well and had a clear plan of attack against their giant neighbours, but failed to convert their chances into goals and then conceded two late on, narrowly losing the game.

In this tactical analysis, we will examine the tactics Espanyol and González used to hurt Barcelona, how Hansi Flick responded, and how Barcelona ultimately got away with the win.

Players & Formations Used

Both managers have played in a 4-2-3-1 formation throughout the season, and neither changed their base formation for the derby.

Manolo González opted to start Marko Dmitrović in goal, with skipper Leandro Cabrera and Fernando Calero forming the experienced centre-back pairing and Carlos Romero and Omar El Hilali playing as the two fullbacks.

Urko González and Pol Lozano played as the double pivot in front of the backline, and Edu Expósito got the start in attacking midfield.

On the wings next to Expósito, Tyrhys Dolan and Pere Milla started and flanked Roberto Fernández as the lone striker, capping off the starting eleven for Espanyol.

On the other side, Hansi Flick started former Espanyol goalkeeper Joan García in goal; it was the young goalkeeper’s first game back at his old club.

Pau Cubarsí and Gerard Martín played as the two centre-backs, with Alejandro Balde playing as left-back and Jules Koundé playing on the right side of defence.

Eric García, once again, played as the holding midfielder next to captain Frenkie de Jong, with Raphinha as the attacking midfielder.

Manchester United loanee Marcus Rashford played on the left wing, young superstar Lamine Yamal on the right, while Ferran Torres started up front.

Espanyol Slicing Through The Press

Espanyol has the image of being a very defensive team, always incredibly physical, and sometimes even more than that, but under Manolo González, the team has undergone a transformation into a good side.

The team creates a decent number of opportunities for themselves, and most of the time, they do so by playing fluid football.

Still, the players know their limits.

They don’t shy away from long balls and playing for second balls, and González and his men did really well against Barca once again on that front.

Espanyol tried to build up with short passes, even against a very high press from Flick’s men.

González pushed the near-sided full-back into a very wide position near the sideline, leaving the two centre-backs to form a pseudo-back three with the goalkeeper.

Barcelona plays very man-oriented when pressing, so if they actually wanted to press aggressively, one of the attackers needed to leave his assignment and press the goalkeeper.

The wide positioning of the near-sided full-back dragged the two Barcelona wingers out of the central areas as well, allowing the double pivot and the far-sided full-back to find themselves in more space in the centre and receive passes from their centre-backs there, breaking the first line of pressure.

What’s near and what’s far-sided was decided by which way Barcelona pressed.

In this case, Espanyol failed to find a solution with short passes, and the pressure got to them, but that wasn’t a huge problem.

Their plan B was to play long passes towards their near side.

The attacking midfielder or striker positioned himself behind the remaining Barcelona midfield and was then the target man for the long balls.

The far-sided winger pushed inwards, playing in the central areas; then the near-sided winger pushed to the sideline.

With their positional play, they always dragged out one centre-back and therefore opened up space in the backline.

González gave the recipient of the long ball the ability to head the ball on towards goal and find a teammate, but they were also able to fight for second balls.

The inverse winger, Dolan, wins the second ball at the end of this situation.

This wasn’t the main reason Espanyol were so dangerous, though; their ability to slice through the press with short passes was way more impressive.

Here we can see another situation, the initial positioning and idea are the same as before.

This time, Calero doesn’t get enough pressure from Torres and manages to find his central midfielder with a short pass, breaking the first line of press immediately.

While Barcelona played with a man-oriented approach, they did not like to be dragged out of their midfield positions, which is why Espanyol often managed to find open space behind the first line of pressure.

Espanyol then often played passes towards the near-sided full-back through the triangle.

While this might seem like a bad idea against the Barcelona press, it was a clear plan.

The pass to the outside acted as a trigger for Flick’s midfielder to engage in the press with more intensity, resulting in the double-pivot pushing forward.

The Espanyol striker kept the pressure on the centre-back by positioning himself right at the halfway line, which resulted in a lot of open space between the backline and the rest of the Barcelona players.

That was precisely the space González wanted to exploit.

Here, Romero just chips the pass over the midfielders towards his attacking midfielder, who is now wide open.

Expósito then has a lot of space, so he just turns, and Espanyol were making runs behind the very high Barcelona backline.

Here, they find Fernández with the through-ball, but García makes a good save and then sacrifices Martín to get the rebound and prevents the goal that way.

Barcelona Involve Their Stars

Barcelona struggled throughout the game; they did not expect Espanyol to have so many solutions against their press, and it definitely knocked their mental state off-balance for a good while.

Their answer was simple: get possession, dominate the game, get the stars involved.

Despite Espanyol playing really well, Flick’s men held 68% of possession over the course of the 90 minutes, so they just needed to stay patient and find one action in their attacking play.

Espanyol tried to press high up the field, but it rarely worked.

Flick used very flat, wide full-backs in this game, preventing Espanyol from condensing the space, and he then positioned his double-pivot in a very narrow shape to drag the press forward and towards one side.

They rarely came under actual pressure that way.

They always had short-passing options, combined with their far superior individual quality, Barcelona were able to beat the attacking press rather easily.

They often used their double-pivot to drag the Espanyol midfielders forward; their approach was kind of similar to what their opponents did that game.

Then, they played a pass to the full-back, attracting the press, and then played backwards to the centre-back.

The four attacking players were very high up the field, creating a huge gap in the midfield.

Then, one of the attacking players dropped back into the open space, and the centre-back was able to find him with a diagonal pass, while De Jong was making a vertical run earlier to open up the passing angle and then to receive the lay-off from Torres here.

Barcelona transitioned into attacking play quickly and then tried to suffocate their opponent.

Flick always had four players form an attacking line to stretch the block with width.

The other players made dynamic movements into the central areas, and Barcelona played a lot of short passes, drawing the Espanyol block towards the centre.

Barcelona overloaded the half-space, dragging the near-sided full-back away from the wing, opening up Lamine Yamal on the wing near the sideline.

Now, they simply involve their star in the game and give him the opportunity to cut inside, dribble past multiple defenders, and create something with pure individual class.

Here, Yamal misses the far post with his shot, but Espanyol were rarely able to actually contain the young Spanish superstar, and it was Barcelona’s most successful attacking pattern in the first half.

Espanyol missed multiple opportunities throughout the first 45 minutes, so the game went into half-time with a goalless draw.

Heroics & Late Goals

The start to the second half of the game was not that different from what happened in the first half.

Barcelona dominated possession, but Espanyol defended well, and Barcelona lacked clear ideas to break through the block.

Espanyol were really direct in their approach and managed to create more opportunities for themselves.

Here, Espanyol were very vertical with their approach, and it worked.

Barcelona did not change their basic approach of triggering their man-oriented press when Espanyol played the ball towards their full-backs; instead, they positioned Eric García differently.

The holding midfielder now pushed forward and inwards, preventing diagonal passes into the central areas of the field and minimising the space between the backline and the midfield.

Instead of playing to the centre, Espanyol now just plays a vertical pass down the channel in the half-space and still manages to progress the ball.

Milla then dribbles inwards, getting past the centre-back covering him and once again bringing the backline into a harsh situation.

Fernández, unlike Dolan, times his run perfectly and once again receives a through pass, muscling off the last defender in Cubarsí.

In the 1-v-1 situation against García in goal, the young goalkeeper makes a phenomenal save against the striker, after his save in the first half, and another save against a header at the end of the first half.

This was his third elite save and the only reason why Barca did not trail at this point.

Joan García was the hero for Barcelona against his former club.

Espanyol tried to keep their intensity up, but started to struggle in the last ten minutes of the game.

In the picture above, we can see a counterattacking situation for Barca after a counterpressing attempt by González‘ men, but Koundé simply dribbles past it and drags the rest of the defence towards the outside, opening up space for De Jong in the centre.

The Dutch midfielder quickly keeps the tempo high, dribbles forward with his first touch, and is able to find substitute Fermín López between the lines against an unorganised Espanyol defence in this situation.

The attacking players and midfielders simply lack the power to make the recovery runs, and Barca is on the way to punishing that.

Robert Lewandowski, another substitute, then makes a very clever horizontal run to drag one centre-half with him; the other centre-half now needs to press Fermín at the edge of the box, opening up space for the third substitute, Dani Olmo, on the left side.

Fermín squares the ball, and Olmo puts it away into the far-sided corner, a beautiful goal and the deciding action of the game, pure individual class once again.

Four minutes later, Barca catches Espanyol on the counter to put the game away.

Conclusion

In the end, the expected outcome did in fact come true for the Derbí Barceloni once again.

FC Barcelona and Hansi Flick win the game and keep their lead in La Liga with two late goals away from home.

Despite the result, Espanyol arguably were the better team.

Manolo González’s team had a clear plan and executed it extremely well, creating multiple good scoring opportunities for themselves, but a heroic performance by their former goalkeeper, Joan García, prevented them from taking the lead.

Flick’s men did not play well overall, but managed to get their individual class on the pitch at just the right time and came away with the three points that way.

While this might not end the long drought in the derby for Espanyol, this game definitely should give them hope for their chances to finish in the top five of La Liga this season.