The two taps

With the first warm days, the club competition cools down and the after-dinner conversations drag on. Fortunately, and finally, conversations begin to move away from the most immediate current events and rise to draw conclusions from the season and beyond... "The Champions League final is proof that modern football tends to promote teams, not stars," said the beloved Xavi Torres in the latest episode of the magnificent Fourteen podcast. With Lu Martín, Frederic Porta, and Michael Turner, he concluded: "PSG loses Mbappé, who goes to Real Madrid, full of stickers, and puts together a truly amazing team: from the goalkeeper to the left winger... The conception of a hard-working team has been brutal!" In three or four sentences, the main sporting news of last summer, the long-awaited signing of Kylian Mbappé to Real Madrid , is overwhelmed by the realization that, at least this season, the game of coaches has won out over the game of individuals. And that doesn't mean that coaches are more important than players, but rather that it's more important to build a good team than to obsess over having the best players.

Everything suggests that, in Flick's Barça squad, Lamine Yamal will shine ever more brightly.

Luis Enrique's Champions League with PSG is a magnificent lesson in this regard. Especially when, around the time of the victorious final, a fragment of "You Have No Idea ," the documentary series about his experience in Paris, re-circulated on social media. He said that no matter how bad it was to lose Mbappé, he could now exercise absolute control over his team's offensive movements. Anticipating every circumstance of the game and responding to it collectively is the strength of great coaches.

Just as when we search for the perfect water temperature, from a combination of two taps, hot and cold, in football, and in life, we must debate between these two strategies, individual or collective, to face adversity. Each club must find its formula, the mix that suits it best. Everything suggests that, in Flick's Barça squad, Lamine Yamal will shine ever more brightly. But it also seems that, in order for Mbappé to compete for his attention, Xabi Alonso's Madrid needs to rediscover the strength of the collective.