Barcelona and the final challenge: another 100 point title run

FC Barcelona is looking at 100 points again. Hansi Flick’s team, in his second season, is aiming for that challenge after 33 matches: they have 85 points and five rounds remain. The condition is to win everything left.

Five victories would take Barça to exactly 100 points. Any slip, no matter how small, would lower the ceiling and leave them outside that territory reserved for almost perfect seasons.

Reaching 100 points has only been achieved once in Barcelona’s history. It was the memorable league title under the late Tito Vilanova in the 2012-13 campaign. 

That team, which also had to rely on Jordi Roura and Aureli Altimira with Tito working from a distance while battling his illness, wanted to honor their coach with a historic milestone never before reached by the Catalan club, matching what Mourinho’s Real Madrid had achieved the previous year in the 2011-12 season.

Three years earlier, Pep Guardiola’s team had recorded 99 points in a season of maximum demand. That Barça lived with the constant pressure of Mourinho’s Real Madrid, forced to win every week to keep pace. It was a relentless title race.

The 2010-11 season, also under Guardiola, produced 96 points, although its mark was more footballing than statistical. That side, dominant in Europe because it also won the Champions League, managed its efforts in the final stretch, aware that its objective went beyond domestic competition.

Later on, Luis Enrique’s Barça reached 94 points in 2014-15, in a season that grew stronger as it went on and ended with the treble. The definitive rise of MSN (Messi, Suárez and Neymar) lifted the competitive level in the second half of the campaign.

The 2017-18 league title, with 93 points, stood out for its reliability. The team coached by Ernesto Valverde suffered only one defeat in the entire competition and knew how to maintain a solid advantage.

And in 2015-16, the 91 points, also with Lucho on the sideline, came after overcoming a spell of doubts in the spring. The team kept enough momentum to close out the championship with room to spare.

That is the scenario in which Hansi Flick’s Barça now moves, seeking its second consecutive league title and looking to break the trend of recent years. 

In recent seasons, champions have lowered the bar to figures close to 85 to 90 points. 

Without going any further, Flick’s first league title came with 88. Now the Blaugrana side is again chasing 100 points. Five matches remain and it needs five victories. One of them, against Real Madrid at Spotify Camp Nou.